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Chap... .... Copyright No. 


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UNITED STATES OF AMERICA. 














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PASSENGERS 


DOOMSDAY 


APRIL 











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PASSENGERS 


DOOMSDAY 

APRIL 


By MYLES HEMENWAY 



BOSTON • SMALL, MAYNARD 
AND COMPANY • MDCCCC 

1+ S * L 




Copyright, 1898, by 
Copeland and Day 


Copyright, 1900, by 
Small, Maynard & Company 




$ 


TWO COPIES RECEIVED, 

Library of Congroaq, 
Office 0 f the 

J AN 7- 1900 

Register of Copyrlgfef* 

54198 


SECOND COPY, 


UNIVERSITY PRESS • JOHN WILSON 
AND SON • CAMBRIDGE, U. S. A. 


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CONTENTS 

Doomsday 

April .... 


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DOOMSDAY 


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i 



LL the singular people who creep 


through the ooze under sea, thought 
the waters were journeying toward the cities 
they had once inhabited. It would soon be 
ebbtide again, and they would be disappointed; 
but it was floodtide now, and the singular 
people looked shoreward in weird hopefulness. 
Some, because remembered in the cities, pos- 
sibly, or having loved the living more than the 
others had, did gain a step or two. One had 
crawled out of a wreck’s porthole, another 
up a companionway, and they now leaned 
against each other in the wreck’s shadow, as 
if strengthening themselves for the long climb 
up the hill of the coast. Other travellers, 
longer upon the way, and constant in many 


Doomsday 

floodtides, were farther upon the journey; but 
all of them were worn, so thin where they 
had at last accomplished their desire, as some 
had in this floodtide, that men did not recog- 
nize them, though all could hear their k sobs 
when they crept from the sea, or trembled 
over their white bones. But those still on 
the way were ignorant of the disappointment 
before them, and all strained in the tide, ac- 
companied by a thousand other things as 
curious as themselves, all oblivious of any 
other way in the sea. 

The joyous waves, racing, in an offshore 
wind, toward the horizon, knew another of 
the sea’s ways, though they were also ig- 
norant of more. The wind was enough for 
them, and enough for the ship, hung with 
bannering sails, and flying . straight from the 
bent Bay, trailing miles of white foam. Two 
ungainly Canadian lumbermen, also catching 
all of the breeze, slid easily across the north, 
like falling stars. In the south, a trim lime- 
coaster swung back and forth in pendulous 
tacks. A feather dropped from a bird’s wing 


2 


Doomsday 

skimmed from crest to crest of the waves, 
or, as if retaining something of the bird’s 
lightsome soul, whirled high as the clouds. 
Thistledown fled down the wind, like fairy 
ghosts. And motes, shaken out of the city’s gay 
vesture, steered the same course as the rest. 

Any one can easily imagine all I have de- 
scribed, but the sea has a still more wonderful 
way. The waters which seem tossed back 
and forth between the wind and moon, are 
really a river, without beginning or end, 
though pouring along channels as fixed as 
those which hold other rivers. Sometimes it 
flows under and over itself, or, without any- 
thing to separate, in opposite ways, here boil- 
ing hot, there polar cold ; for the river or 
current is independent of climates, makes 
climates, indeed. 

Off our down-east coast, the current upsets 
latitudes more violently than anywhere else in 
the world. Down it float the terrible children 
the glacier pushes into the sea, and more 
terrible derelict codfishers and whalers, sunk 
to the tip of split masts, or upreared stumps of 
3 



Doomsday 


bowsprits. Sometimes it brings an Esquimau’s 
battered kaiak, or the Esquimau himself, meas- 
uring his strange course, with white face, by 
the stars. 

To-day, a single red dory drifted down the 
cold way. 


II 



DORY is the fisherman’s cart, his 


jL~\. wheelbarrow, and carriage. It is a flat- 
bottomed boat, with a wide flare of the sides 
and the slenderest possible stern, holding fish 
up to the thwarts, and light with a fishermaid 
and her lover. Men have come from the 
dead in them, or what would have been death 
in another. Young fishermen row them in 
lusty games, and they make stately procession 
in a festival or funeral. 

The red dory was put together like all its 
kind, kneed and ribbed with toughest of oak, 
and planked with light cedar ; but red was a 
singular color. Usually, a fisherman paints 
his dory white, sometimes trimming the gun- 


4 


Doomsday 

wales with green or even black. I have 
even seen a dory painted green from stem to 
stern, but never another in the guise of the 
red dorv. It was red outside and in, except 
on the forward rail, where the owner had 
rudely spelled a name in yellow letters, — 
another singularity, for few dories ever aspire 
to a name, none before this one to such a 
name as The Voice . 

The red dory’s navigation was more curious 
than its color or name. There were two 
good ash oars in the boat, but both had been 
shipped, lying dry on the thwarts, while the 
passenger, squat in the bottom, looked fixedly 
across the bow, and whispered or sung a low 
prayer or chant, — 

“ Thou art my helm ! Thou art my 
helm ! ” 

The wind blew the crest of the waves over 
the gunwale, and upon the thwarts, in a white 
rime that condensed into brown water about 
the dory man’s knees ; but he did not bail the 
boat, though a battered can rolled under the 
stern seat ; and he never shifted his position, 
5 


Doomsday 

all his energy going up in his recurrent ascrip- 
tion. Moses might have prayed so, under 
the pillar of fire. It was more than Moses’ 
faith, indeed ; for there was not a cloud in the 
sky, was nothing there, except one great arch 
vaulting from the wind-blown, tide-vexed, 
and current-driven sea, out of infinite sight. 

Crouched as he was, one could see the 
red dory man was a giant, deep shouldered as 
an ox, with powerful hands, though uplifted 
so meekly. A great beard and head of blown 
hair, tangled and gray-streaked, exposed rather 
than hid his thick neck, which was lean, in 
spite of its size, and showed the ropelike 
sinews tying jowl and face and pate to his 
great shoulders. His lips were thin, and pressed 
together between his prayers. His nostrils, 
thin as his lips, were constantly dilated, and 
the bone of his nose bulged like a cliff. One 
could not tell whether he were gray-visioned 
or black, so deep were his eyes, or so far did 
his forehead, wrinkled like a ploughed field, 
overhang. His voice was low, — so low I 
have called it a whisper, — but was sweet, and 
6 


Doomsday 

deep, and passionate, as the cry of the surf 
where it hammers the bell-rim of the shore. 

Where the red dory man came from, no 
one ever knew ; stole out of some city’s great 
dock possibly, or was dropped from some 
shipside, or came from some fisherman’s cove. 
The dory showed he was a fisherman. His 
hands were also line-calloused and fin- scarred, 
and his luck afterward, in feeding himself 
from the sea, proved he had all of a fisher- 
man’s cunning. But this was. no fisherman’s 
cruise, unless men bait vacant sky. 

Evidently he was inspired by some great 
religious emotion. His prayer, and the un- 
handled dory slipping up and down the blue 
and white waves like a blot of blood, hinted 
magnificent folly or wisdom, as if he flung 
his life so into the hands of its Giver, or went 
to His will. 

There were wide fields on the right, , 
dipping into brown meadow-brooks, or rising 
into purple hills. Had the red dory man 
turned, he could have seen stooped mowers 
hastening along the clover-covered slopes, or 
7 


Doomsday 

heard the tune they stopped to play, together, 
upon ringing scythes. The tune was blown 
down the wind, with song of barefooted girls 
who hunted red strawberries, in the wet grass, 
or crowned themselves with primroses, upon 
gray stone walls ; but the rapt doryman was as 
unconscious of them as of the chanting sailors 
upon the ship and lumbermen. Pastoral and 
passionate quest alike escaped him, — blind and 
deaf to the sweet land and mysterious ocean, 
as the red dory was to tide and wind, drawn, 
as it was, by the unseen. 

Down the haunting coast and wind-blown 
horizon, the boat and worshipper fled; one of 
them staring at the sky, the other trembling 
in the current, as so many men and all things 
have gone from the beginning. 

Opposite our Bay mouth’s lower jaw, 
there is a half-dozen miles of wrinkled gray 
rock called Thunder Island . A score or 

more of fishermen have built themselves rude 
cabins in a hole in one of its sides. In the 
current, island and hole lay exactly before 
the red dory ; and true to itself, though seem- 
8 


Doomsday 


ing to lose its prey, the current hove dory 
and passenger, high and dry, on a bit of 
beach in front of the wild village. 


Ill 


HE island, which might be a tooth 



X dropped from the Bay mouth’s lower 
jaw, is covered in sheltered places with a 
rime of thin earth, out of which the grass, 
as if afraid of blowing away, only curls a few 
inches, and the stunted trees, for the same 
reason, grow bigger around than tall. Wher- 
ever exposed to the sea, the rock is bare, or 
sodden with surf, growing nothing, unless it 
be the thunderous boom naming the island. 

Rude as the fishermen’s cabins appear, they 
have an interest no smug house in the city ever 
excited. All are built of sea-drift or wreck- 
age, some lumber-king’s raft, broken. in pieces 
up river or in the farther Saint John’s, provid- 
ing sills, every log of the lot worn smooth in 
the strife of the sea. There are shingle roofs. 


9 


Doomsday 

and stave roofs from rum puncheons. One 
fisherman has secured enough red tile, from a 
smashing storm, to cover his head, building 
the name plank of the wreck, that brought it, 
into the wall below, as if advertising the 
source of his fortune. 

Such names are built into the walls of 
many of the cabins. Perhaps they are thought 
a distinction. Sometimes all the letters have 
not come ashore. One cabin has a single 
huge M over the door, and another the 
same letter over a window. These separate 
letters seem an especial mark, their mystery 
imparting any degree their owners choose to 
assume. One of these M’s, for example, 
might be an initial from the famous Highla?id 
Mary which so uncannily disappeared be- 
tween Liverpool and New York, without«other 
token ; or it may have come from the Sea 
Mist . You remember how she pounded to 

pieces on the Newfoundland rocks, crushing 
one of her hundred lives at every blow. I 
am sure this letter has been written upon more 
wrecks than any other, which may explain 
io 


Doomsday 

its repetition on the walls of these wreckwood 
cabins, though the guess Highland Mary or 
Sea Misty might better have been some coast- 
ing Molly or codfishing Meg . God knows 
there would be tragedy enough in the humbler 
names, if written upon Thunder Island’s 
record ! 

Terrible place, this, for a man of imagina- 
tion ! Every plank in the squat cabins has 
individual horror for him. The bit of deck, 
that now shuts out the wet from some pipe- 
smoking crone tanned like a smoked herring, 
once kissed the fair foot of captain’s lady. 
Another, still bears the faint tinge of some 
throat-cutting mutiny. The doorsill of the 
cabin, which most concerns us, holds a slug 
of gray lead that sings of sea-fights, pirates, 
admirals, and glory, or half-naked men drunk 
with their own foaming blood. 

Fortunately, or unfortunately,, most of the 
islanders are themselves too deep in the sea’s 
tragedy to waste sympathy or pain over the 
sufferings told upon the walls of their cabins. 
The storm has beaten their faces, until all are 


ii 


Doomsday 

hard-featured as the storm-beaten rocks. Their 
oar-stroke is almost always heavy ; their feet 
drag up the beach in strange paralysis, and 
words drone in their mouths. Possibly this 
is exterior. While the elements have ham- 
mered their surface into seeming stupidity, 
below, there may be, my story will show that 
there is, as much red blood in them as in 
thinner-skinned people, and, when it is stirred, 
as awful passions, more terrible for their rude 
breakage through this crust of their lives. 
Nowhere do men drink deeper than they. 
There is a saying that any two of them could 
navigate a dory through hell. None are gen- 
tlemen, but almost all have a life or two to 
their credit. Mind you, I am not praising. 
They can save life like God, and be sodden 
drunk the day after. More of them are killed 
upon shore than are drowned in the sea, 
and they have no scruples about robbing the 
dead. Life emphasizes all its contradictions 
in the island and the men, to whom the red 
dory had brought its strange passenger. 


12 


Doomsday 


IV 


HE voyager rose painfully as soon as 



1 his boat ran aground, unsteady in the 
trembling hold of the red dory upon the slip- 
pery sands, also from long kneeling in the 
boat ; but he finally stumbled across the gun- 
wale, and when he felt the solid earth beneath 
his feet, straightened up, though retaining his 
hold upon the rail of the boat. The red dory 
may have been only a physical support, but 
there seemed more in his nervous clutch upon 
it, as if the boat were a comrade to whom he 
clung upon this strange coast. To some, 
sticks and stones have unhearing ears and 
speechless tongues ; but a familiar bit of either 
often contains, as I have shown, the soul or 
spirit of much greater things. 

The red dory was all this man possessed, 
therefore it had become larger than a conti- 
nent or navy. He may have been uncon- 
scious of his temper toward the singular painted 
craft, might possibly have denied his feeling 


Doomsday 

toward it, in the strange days to come, had 
any ever chided him. Such unconsciousness 
of real feeling toward friends and things may 
be curious, but it is not uncommon; and in- 
separable as the fishermen were from their 
boats, they were too much taken with noi- 
sier circumstances, during the red dory man’s 
stay with them, to discover or apply such 
philosophy. 

There was another reason why the man 
leaned upon the dory, deeper, you may think, 
than my philosophy. 

A woman had come out of one of the far- 
ther cottages as the red dory swung ashore, 
and something of the stranger’s unconscious 
dependence upon his boat was surprise at her. 
It was not the landing of the dory that brought 
her out ; for she came down the beach with- 
out looking at it, and passed as if unaware of 
the singular spectacle it and its master made, 
walking like a somnambulist or in the greater 
oblivion of trouble, her white face bent in 
one direction. Women can go by us upon 
a crowded street this way, and think it a fine 

14 


Doomsday 

thing to so cut an admiring world ; but in a 
lane or upon a beach, the coldest will vouchsafe 
a glance, and the sweeter-mannered country 
girl or fishermaid will even smile upon the 
wayfarer. But if the red dory man noticed 
the woman’s apparent rudeness, he showed 
no resentment, and did not speak, though his 
eyes opened curiously upon her, as a child’s 
do at new astonishment. 

Any woman is interesting. The veriest 
hag, gnawed by the tough tooth of time, 
moves us like a play. When she is fair as 
Margaret Holme, she startles us from any 
dream, though we are prophet and just now 
looked upon God. 

You must not think everything upon the 
islands is ugly. I have found violets and a 
white flower in the rough crop of brown 
grass, both of them sweeter for their hard 
lot. If the rock can blossom, may not sav- 
age islanders sometimes bear a fair woman? 
Margaret was certainly own child of the 
islanders. She had inherited from them, as 
the violet and white flower from the thin sod 
15 


Doomsday 

and the rock, and with much the same result ; 
her fair body being slim as either’s slender 
stem, with face of the white flower, and 
violet eyes. 

But Margaret’s eyes and face were turned 
away from the red dory man that day. All 
he saw of her was her hastening feet, slight 
white-clad body bent as in a wind, and one 
white cheek and ear veiled in tangled hair. 
No woman could pass any man and show less 
of herself. Yet he saw all of her, and loved 
her, as he would afterward when he lost him- 
self upon her lips. 

What an idiot is love, or how wise ! You 
shall not be my friend until I have spent green 
weather and white with you. I will not 
lend you moneys until you have told a story 
that would make a Meribah of any miser’s 
heart. But any man — I do not say myself, 
for I have a wife, and wives like not such con- 
fessions, though I do not know why, for all 
of them win us by the means I shall describe ; 
but any other man will give himself, soul and 
body, at the lisp of some woman’s skirts, 
16 


Doomsday 

or for a curl the wind blows from her ear, or 
for a single glance or smile ; any of which 
things, all sober-minded people must confess 
is small price for a soul and body, unless souls 
and bodies are cheaper than commonly sup- 
posed. Cheap or dear, the red dory man gave 
all he had, that moment, for what he saw 
of Margaret as she passed. Though he after- 
wards thought he recovered what he gave, he 
really lost everything from that moment, even 
though he repented or tried to repent of such 
a sale of himself, as soon as she was gone. 


V 

B ACK in the unknown port, out of which 
he had so unreservedly cast himself, the 
red dory man had been lit by that strange 
expectancy of the world’s end breaking out in 
New England in his time, as it has elsewhere 
again and again. Sublime as his folly was, it 
was not peculiar. Others who felt the afflatus, 
or were moved by an emotion so much deeper 
17 


Doomsday 

than human sympathy that it seemed an earth 
throb, had given away boats and cabins, and 
now toiled afoot from village to village on the 
mainland, spreading the great proclamation. 
Sublime folly ! but sublime, for it showed 
men still have the stuff of apostles. 

The owner of the red dory, moved by his 
wild imagination, had baptized his boat in the 
bloody paint, signalizing the new birth in the 
curious name written in flaming yellow on 
the boat’s forward rail, and then shoved him- 
self adrift in it, resolved his message should be 
delivered or not, as God willed. Folly as it 
was, it was not ignorance. 

By all the signs, the prophet was no lands- 
man. Some of the weird suppliants, in the dusk 
waters, had very like been dorymates. Possibly 
he had visited them, hobnobbing in the ooze, or 
on the slippery decks, in as senseless a way as the 
dead, or kicking them in their rib-latticed stom- 
achs with no more emotion than was in their 
own bony blows upon his pate. Many have 
held such conversation with the dead, and re- 
covered the more ordinary speech of the 
18 


Doomsday 

world ; but no one who has done so will 
underestimate what he has seen, or the dan- 
gers of the way to that world from which he 
has returned. The red dory man had known 
the sea, and that his boat’s chance of landing 
anywhere, except among the wrecks, was as 
one to the infinite. 

Evidently the message was true. He had 
been brought to this wild fragment of the 
world to foretell its end with the rest. What 
room here for a woman’s fair face ? He had 
been surprised, and in his surprise drunk up 
something, as the woman passed, untasted here- 
tofore, that for a moment shook the doomed 
world from his mind, and gave him a glimpse 
of another infinitely sweet ; but Margaret was 
gone, and nothing now invaded the red 
dory’s shadow. He was only a voice, come 
to pierce the islanders’ ears with a note un- 
attained by their thunderous breakers. 

God was at the door ! He looked up, 
half expecting the blue curtain of the sky 
would be thrust aside ; but it hung unwrinkled 
by man’s fear or hope as always, though its 
19 


__ 


Doomsday 

serenity neither reassured nor raised a doubt 
within the prophet. Was not, or had not the 
heavenly sickness been in his veins ? True, 
there was the emotion he had felt at Margaret’s 
passing, strangely harmonious with the un- 
troubled sky ; but it would be forgotten, he 
believed, underneath the burden put upon him, 
he knew now, by God. 

God was at the door ! The prophet pros- 
trated himself upon the beach. What if God 
had come while he was looking in that wo- 
man’s face ? Great drops of sweat drenched 
his clothing. His hands bled, wounded by 
mussle shells and rusty spikes ; but he did not 
feel the pain, or, if he did, exulted in it like 
a flagellant. 

God was at the door ! Even the breakers 
seemed to fall into accompaniment of the Dies 
Irce that swelled within his ears, as if the 
earth prophesied its own end. He thought it 
did, and while he listened, awed over such 
confirmation of his message, and expecting some 
addition to it, looked up, as he had upon the 
waters, the prayer or chant once more swell- 


20 


Doomsday 


ing on his lips ; but it was to find no utterance 
here, a sailor’s ditty bringing him suddenly 
to his feet, in white protest. 

“ Oh, the sailorman is a merry man,” the 
song ran, jovially uneven in the distance, but 
rising into a sturdy roar as the singer ap- 
proached : 

“ A merry man is he, 

With a yo-heave-ho ! and grog below, 

And a steady wind at sea.” 


VI 


HE singer came with Margaret, who had 



1 been seeking him when she first went 
by, was her husband indeed, and as much of a 
giant as the prophet, though pimple-faced and 
on legs unsteady for another reason. Any 
one could have seen that the song pitched the 
tune of the man, his great face was full of 
humorsome wrinkles, and his eyes laughed in 
his head like an ape’s, and with an ape’s glint 
of rage, underneath. He was such a man as 


21 


Doomsday 

nature pounds out with her rudest blows, 
and leaves half done, for the brute, himself, to 
finish merrily, or in rage, or, as often, to 
hammer both ways, in mixed hurt and 
gayety. Bowline, his father had named him, 
long ago shortened to Bowl by appreciative 
companions. 

Most fishermen can drink and work, but 
Bowl’s inability was notorious, — an inability, 
however, that troubled him little. “ One 
thing at a time ! ” he would cry, when any 
talk of fishing invaded his drinking-bouts. 
When the fleet sailed, he was always asleep. 
Another excuse for his idleness was a single 
deep-water voyage, which he seemed to think 
distinguished him above other islanders. The 
fishermen said he was really afraid of the sea. 
Once, a mate, more drunken than usual, asked 
what had scared him from the deep water. 
As Bowl reached over the table, and ham- 
mered the interlocutor into unconsciousness, 
before answering, nobody knew more of what 
had occurred on the celebrated cruise than be- 
fore. It was discouraging to curiosity, but 
22 


Doomsday 

Bowl drank in peace afterward, and roared his 
praise of sailormen, grog, and fair weather, 
without interruption, always making the glasses 
dance to the tune of the ditty, as he pounded 
it out on the table. 

“Ship ahoy!” Bowl shouted, when they 
were opposite the red dory, leering upon it 
with drunken surprise and meddlesomeness. 

All the prophet heard was Margaret’s falter- 
ing steps, and her shame closed his eyes, 
though not until he had again drunk of her 
sorrowful face, its fair features blessing and 
cursing him in a breath. There was nothing 
weak in his attitude. He had leaped to his 
feet, in strenuous protest, at Bowl’s interrupt- 
ing ditty, and still strained uneasily, expos- 
ing all his splendid strength and stature, but 
Bowl and Margaret were as unaware of it as 
himself. Bowl was too drunk to observe, and 
Margaret only thought of getting him away. 
Bowl resisting with drunken good-humor, 
and once more hailing the prophet through a 
mockingly improvised trumpet made of both 
hands held up to his mouth : 

23 


Doomsday 

“ Ship ahoy ! ” 

Still no answer. The prophet, whose eyes 
were again open, was looking at a tear on 
Margaret’s cheek, or, maybe, repeating one 
of Christ’s commandments. 

Margaret at last became aware of him, 
looking up, with sober directness, into his eyes. 
Her gaze might have come from hurt, or fear, or 
even hate ; but all the red dory’s passenger saw 
was her violet eyes drawing an unknown emo- 
tion out of him, as the sky lifts the white life 
out of the sea. 

By this time Bowl had discovered the sin- 
gular name yellow- written on the dory’s 
forward rail, and at once began crackling over 
its present inaptness. 

“ The Voice /” he cried, sticking his nose 
under the prophet’s, and dubiously shaking 
his head, “Lost Voice , I should say! Has 
a frog in its gullet ? ” he sarcastically enquired, 
“ or the sulks?” The last notion set him 
frowning again, and his fist went up, hanging 
an instant before the white prophet, as if still 
giving chance for response. But the thin lips, 
24 


Doomsday 

his fist almost grazed, only tightened ; and 
straightening up — Bowl was tall as the 
prophet and for a moment as sober — he 
struck out and upon the prophet’s closed 
mouth, laughing again as the blow fell. 

There was no sign of return, neither was 
there any offer of the other cheek. Blood 
oozed from the prophet’s closed fingers, in- 
stead, found by his nails in old wounds or 
drawn out of new ones ; but no blood leaped 
into his face, and there was no shadow upon 
it. 

Bowl saw nothing of the prophet’s restraint, 
however, and, his interest gone, bade Margaret 
come along, and went off trolling his ditty as 
if uninterrupted. 

Margaret followed her husband, but with 
such a look of fierce contempt, no one would 
have mistook her action for obedience. She 
had seen everything, and was bewildered. An 
islander, insulted so, would have killed the 
miserable aggressor. She understood her own 
lack of pity at the thought that such a con- 
sequence might have followed Bowl’s inso- 
25 


Doomsday 

lence. But no one like the red dory man had 
ever come upon the island. There were 
cowards a-plenty ; she had heard them yell 
for mercy. If the prophet had flinched, she 
would have understood him, if she gave him 
so much thought ; but he had not stirred a 
hair. Had she not seen the blood dropping 
from his passive hands, she might have thought 
him without feeling. His blood cried out to 
her, though with so strange and new a voice it 
was confusing. All about her swung the mad 
abandon of the sea. The world she knew 
was full of terrific display. Bowl’s wild ditty, 
ahead, was outsung by the surf. Everybody 
knew how much she hated Bowl. , This 
man’s suppressed emotion was mysterious. 
It flew in the face of all she knew, and 
naturally she noticed him, thought of nothing 
else indeed, though she was following Bowl. 


26 


Doomsday 


VII 

M ARGARET’S home - coming, like 
everything else about the island, was 
too familiar to her to excite interest or appre- 
hension. Bowl would fill their cabin with 
his roaring song ; but its words had pounded 
on the walls without variation, long as they 
had lived together, long, it seemed to her, as 
the waves had beat the island : so crackless 
are monotonous years. He would be playful, 
and disgust her ; but her heart was wry with 
him always. He might be#t her,but he had 
beaten her before, and all the islanders beat 
their wives. 

What made the sorrows of the other wives 
bearable was the mother love their husbands 
allowed. The burden they carried underneath 
their hearts in pregnancy, and the agony of 
their travail, sweetened their husband’s blows 
and curses, or benumbed them. To be a 
mother will offset any man’s brutality. Every 
child increased their labors, it is true, and some 
27 


Doomsday 

of their children broke their hearts ; but labor 
was forgetting, and it was better to mother 
a villain than to wife one, and better to have 
any son than none. 

Margaret was childless. Bowl’s drunken 
embraces would have been bearable had they 
begotten children, even though such offspring 
had been grinning idiots. She could have 
pitied them and learned how to weep, could 
have worked for them and forgotten. But no 
son or daughter had ever come, and there was 
no one to stand between herself and Bowl. 
The gentlest relation would have been strained 
by such intimacy.. A child is foil for the love 
of the best man and woman. Margaret was 
entirely unprotected from Bowl’s brutal inter- 
course. 

Bowl was tall and strong when they were 
married, and there was the glamour about him 
of the single deep-water cruise from which he 
had just returned. She had poured out all 
her fair life upon him those first years, in the 
insensibility of love. His drunkenness was a 
matter of course ; all the men she knew were 
28 


Doomsday 

mighty drinkers. She had taken up net- 
making, for a meagre living, without complaint. 
The beatings hurt her no more than they do 
boys at school. But the childless house was 
crueler than death. 

Her instincts were primitive, elemental, for 
that very reason, fierce. Without the grace 
of fatherhood. Bowl was like one uncon- 
secrated. His approach polluted her, was 
sacrilege ; and if she had killed him in her 
bed, she would have appeased her chastity 
unpityingly as men once appeased their gods. 
Her heart had frozen in the service of his lust. 

She had been as much disappointed as sur- 
prised by the prophet’s self-control. What- 
ever kept the dripping hands in leash, on his 
own account, they should have been loosed 
for her, she thought. The stranger’s igno- 
rance of her shame had no logic. A general 
righteousness should have guided him. God 
should have struck through him. 

Wonder over the prophet’s restraint, could 
not keep her own hands still. She wrung 
them as she followed Bowl, sorrowfully per- 
29 


Doomsday 

haps, but as much to make sure they, at any 
rate, were free. The prophet followed her 
with his eyes, but she did not look back. She 
heard the angry cries of other wives, inside 
the cabins, without realization. All she was 
conscious of was the unsteady man before her. 
Every zigzag of his crooked steps took her as 
crookedly ; every word of his ditty turned 
into a malediction on her whispering lips. 

A curious thing, under the westering sun, 
the home-coming of these two, one of them 
roaring full of a merry ditty, the other twist- 
ing her fingers as if around a windpipe ! But 
they had found their cabin the same way many 
times before ; and when Bowl pushed in 
ahead, and she had shut the door, Margaret 
fell into the homely supper-ways, only for- 
getting salt, which he only noticed by flinging 
the tasteless dish beneath the table : so meanly 
do some tragedies seem to end. 


30 


Doomsday 


VIII 

HEN Bowl and Margaret disap- 



peared, the prophet sunk once more 


into the red dory’s shadow, keeping his vigil 
without further interruption until the fisher- 
men, who had beaten up and down the fish- 
ing-grounds all day and caught nothing, began 
to return ; one unlucky trawler beaching his 
boat after another, all in grim silence or mut- 
tering imprecations. All saw the red dory ; 
but they were too heavy with rowing and 
discouragement to be curious or to meddle. 
Everything secured, they limped up the beach, 
appearing, in their yellow sea-clothes and with 
their shouldered pairs of sweeping oars, a 
desultory flight of curious and mammoth fowl, 
each retreating to its own gray nest of wreck- 
age, and leaving the beach lonely as it had 
been before. The cabins were more silent if 
anything, an ominous hush settling over all, as 
the hungry fishermen disappeared inside. 


Doomsday 

Great shadows began to creep from the 
east, carrying on their flood the wreckage of 
the ocean song. The gay music of the day 
softened into indistinct and long-drawn sighs 
shivering half across the world, or broke in 
gurgling shrieks. Then the sun sank like a 
ship afire, drowning everything, one might 
have thought for breathless moment, for every- 
thing at the moment of such sunsets suddenly 
becomes stark and still. When the song 
stirred again, it was slender-voiced as the trem- 
bling of a single pipe along the pasture lands, 
but returned to its accustomed, if not louder, 
volume as the night wore on, though always 
hollow-toned, as if the night were ghost 
a-whistling in its cheek. 

The prophet had not stirred, oblivious of 
the fishermen as they of him, suffering none 
from inhospitality he did not feel, and the 
greater terror of his inner vision obscuring the 
familiar horror of the world. It was dusk 
before he betrayed any knowledge of the ha- 
bitual ways of men. 

I have spoken of the wreckage built into the 
32 


Doomsday 

cabins. Fragments of the black drift sprawled 
everywhere upon the beach, most of it 
splintered timbers useless in the fisher builders’ 
humble art, but all of it stained with blood of 
rusty spikes and rich with salt rime and the 
hot life of the sun poured into opening seams, 
every black knee or rib holding in its heart a 
thousand fiery ardors, though aloom in the 
shadows like black letters on a mouldy page. 

Groping from stick to stick, difficultly in 
the shadows as a child over its first lesson, the 
prophet gathered one piece of the drift upon 
another into a heap a half-dozen paces from 
the dory. When he had gathered sufficient 
for his purpose, he found a match in some 
corner of a pocket, and lit the pile, his breath 
and swung coat coaxing the trembling flame 
into a blaze that soon leaped from him, roaring 
the sorrows or laughter of the driftwood, and 
illuminating all the beach. Then he began to 
prophesy. 

Never was there such another voice, har- 
monizing, I have heard, with that wreckage of 
the ocean song adrift upon the flood of shad- 
33 


Doomsday 

ovvs, striking the strained ears of the fisher 
wives, like something supernatural, they have 
told me, and stirring them uneasily. It had 
been hammered, spun, or ground, however 
voice is made, out of every element and pas- 
sion ; creation of drowning cries, and whistling 
winds, and breakers. The fisher children 
crept together as it rose, stopping their ears in 
scared foolishness, or feeling for each other’s 
hands. There were words, but these individ- 
uals of speech were submerged in the solemn 
majesty of the voice itself ; so awesome that the 
breathless fishermen, frightened from half-eaten 
suppers by imagination of distress guns, laughed 
out of sheer relief, when they poured out 
doors and saw the prophet’s lifted hands. 

What the prophet said, when they gathered 
round him, was in all their Bibles, but so sel- 
dom read that its incongruity was entirely 
unsoftened. All the fishermen comprehended 
was themselves huddling, half-lit half-en- 
shadowed, around the eerie fire, the pas- 
sionate poverty of their lives and the overtone 
of the prophet’s voice, beaten out of fa- 
34 


Doomsday 

miliar sorrows. His retelling of a Hebrew 
vision had no significance. The image with a 
gold head and clay feet, he redescribed, was 
unreal to them as a giant of some fairy tale. 
If he had conjured his world’s end from the 
images’ clay toes, their derision could have 
been no louder. Indeed, this was exactly what 
most of them thought he did, and they jeered 
as they would have done had the prophet 
come up the beach in ancient Daniel’s cos- 
tume. But none of them forgot the voice. 

After the fire died, and the scorned prophet 
had huddled himself inside the red dory, and 
they themselves to bed, the voice smote across 
their dreams, vast as if their own sorrow spoke. 
Men and women wept in silence side by side 
in the dark, understanding the voice then 
without trouble, and themselves as never be- 
fore : so plain had the voice on the beach 
made their hearts to each other. 

But Margaret and Bowline were dry-eyed. 


35 


Doomsday 


IX 

M ARGARET heard the voice, looked 
up, past Bowl sprawling in a drowse 
among the dishes on the table, toward the 
crack in door or window through which it 
poured, but sat still at the table foot until it 
passed. Afterwards, Bowl, awakened by his 
own awkwardness, had risen and left the 
house, without noticing the unkempt table or 
his silent wife. Margaret stirred slightly 
when he shut the door, but only from the 
sudden gust of wind. Her husband’s errand 
did not interrupt the voice or memory of it, 
accentuated it instead ; for it had come to her, 
as to all the islanders, because pitched to her 
distress. Bowl’s absence only gave the peg in 
her heart another twist to keep the strings 
there from slipping below the voice’s tone. 
Alone, there was more room for its reverberat- 
ing grief. For, sympathetic as Margaret’s 
passion made her, the voice was more to her 
than echo, as in others, of her own bitterness. 
36 


Doomsday 

The silent prophet had thrown her dis- 
cordant life into sharp relief. Bowl had been 
hateful, he was now repulsive. His lips, how- 
ever drawn, would always be screwed into the 
silly laugh accompanying his blow upon the 
prophet’s face. They had crept up the beach 
that afternoon, and the way was almost as 
level as a floor ; but she had panted upon it as 
if suffocating. Her twisted fingers had only 
answered others at her throat. They would 
leave no nail-prints ; but some things kill 
without a scratch. All through the supper, 
she had fought with the intangible that took 
her life. Looking through the window, you 
would have sworn Bowl slept ; but men 
murder in their sleep. His sleep murdered 
Margaret. 

She could not cry, but the prophet did, 
though out of his own sorrow. His sorrow 
was what saved her. None of his words 
reached her in the house. She knew less of 
what men would generally call his life than 
we, for which the voice was only plainer, all 
the man’s world weariness and divine nostalgia 
37 


Doomsday 

blowing through the piping wreckwood walls, 
unhindered by slant of eyebrow or quiver of 
a lip. His naked soul had come in to her, 
and she was breathless, whether with love or 
pity, they who have seen as much may say. 

The hours went in a dream. All the sick- 
ening horror of her life had disappeared. Her 
heart trembled like a girl’s. The old-time 
softness came into her face, and her violet eyes 
were full of the mysterious light of youth. 

For the first time since they were married, 
Margaret had forgotten Bowl. The voice 
was not a child, but speech such as often 
breaks upon the hearts of childless wives like 
her. If they are robbed of children and God 
will not separate them from loveless husbands, 
they lose themselves in unlawful love. It is 
choice between wickedness and madness. I 
do not mean that such wives deliberate, or 
weigh crime against distraction. The unlaw- 
ful love is thrust upon them. “ By the 
devil,” did you say? Is the devil more 
merciful than God ? But let it be the devil, 
and let what comes to them be another view 
38 


Doomsday 

of hell ; it is change, at any rate, and another 
place in the fires is merciful, if the fires are 
inevitable. 

But Margaret felt nothing of the fires. All 
the fierceness in her heart was gone. Great 
tears dropped one after another upon her 
hands. She even smiled as she looked out of 
the window through which the voice had 
come. She could not see the beach, or red 
dory, or the prophet, but saw farther, and 
went to him as he had come to her. 

The hush of midnight was in all the house. 
Margaret’s half-burned candle shone upon the 
familiar things, about the room, with misty 
light. She had not touched the food upon the 
table, or stirred from the table foot, where Bowl 
had left her and the voice had found her, ex- 
cept in the wayfaring of her soul ; and one 
can go that way without steps or shifting seat. 
When she did rise, she gathered up the frag- 
ments Bowl had left, and went out, and down 
the beach, bearing the bread in both her hands, 
guided by the last flickering of the prophet’s 
fire. 


39 


Doomsday 

She found him in the dory, his white face 
looking upward from a thwart, his arms 
stretched across the gunwale as if to meet 
her. She touched his hands, and when he 
sat up offered him the bread. The prophet 
took it, but without a word of recognition. 
Possibly he did not recognize her, or the 
islanders’ scorn and his hunger had stupefied 
him, or God was adding to his message, or he 
knew Margaret and was afraid. It was plain, 
however, that their time had not yet come. 
Swift as spirits are, they never leap into each 
other’s arms. Men and women who have 
explored each other’s hearts hesitate with lips. 

When the prophet had eaten, he thanked 
her, and Margaret went back into her child- 
less world, and shadows, and her husband’s 
roaring ditty : for Bowl met her at the cabin 
door. 


40 


Doomsday 


X 

B OWL entered first, as in the afternoon, 
singing the ditty through without a pause, 
apparently unaware of her. Indeed, he never 
seemed more taken with his song, finishing it 
with an extra flourish. When they were 
inside, he began it over, dropping into the 
chair, he had abandoned earlier in the evening, 
and pounding out an accompaniment upon the 
table, the dancing dishes and flaring candle 
exciting him to greater efforts. He made as 
if to begin again, ignoring Margaret with his 
eyes, his voice pitched to the song ; but what 
he said was : 

“ Got home too soon, did I ? ” rolling the 
last word as, previously, the last word of the 
ditty. 

Margaret was drawn up on the other side 
of the table, where she had gone on entering, 
putting it between them instinctively ; for 
Bowl’s apparent obliviousness had not deceived 
4i 


Doomsday 

her, and the curiously directed question found 
her strained to meet it, but she was silent as 
the prophet had been in the afternoon. 

Singing into the timbered ceiling. Bowl 
tried again : 

€€ They have women in the cities, where we 
sailed, they call street-walkers ; you must have 
been beach-walking this fine night ?” None 
of the brutal words dropped from the ditty’s 
pitch, and his fingers still played the careless 
tune upon the table edge. 

Margaret bent ever so little in his scorn, 
but only for a moment. Bowl’s brutal accu- 
sation was truer than he dreamed. She was 
guilty in soul, if not in body, — greater crime 
if love is ever criminal. Her breath stopped 
upon her lips ; but her white face was expres- 
sionless as frozen features would have been. 

“ Open your mouth ! ” Bowl sung. 

It was like a farce, or would have been had 
Margaret not been in the scene herself. She 
had played the part before, and knew the end, 
the always horrible end, however lightly Bowl 
pronounced the dialogue. This piece was 
42 


Doomsday 

partly new, but that only prepared her for a 
worse denouement. 

Bowl’s supper plate was on the board 
before him, dirty as he had left it. Lifting it 
upon a finger, he twirled it dizzily before her 
eyes a second, and then flung or tossed it into 
her face, laying her insensible upon the floor, 
with a great wound across her forehead. 

Bowl did not rise, or even shift himself in 
his chair, though she was hidden from him by 
the table, and he could not see how badly she 
was hurt ; he only muttered : 

“ Must have broke the plate ! ” and again, 
his voice cracking with evil mirth : €€ Guess 
my lady ’ll answer now ! ” 

But Margaret did not answer, more obsti- 
nate in the white heap she made upon the floor 
than when standing. Even the thin fountain 
of the wound spouted noiselessly, running 
slower every moment, until it dropped only 
fast enough to prevent her sodden hair, and 
dress, and the splashed floor, from drying or 
becoming duller red. 

Instead of alarming him, Margaret’s silence, 
43 


Doomsday 

or else the drink, seemed to stupefy Bowline. 
A blear settled over his eyes, his body shrank 
together, and finally he fell into an uneasy sleep. 

The flaring candle burned to a greasy pud- 
dle in its bronze socket, tumbled in, and 
drowned itself with spluttering reproaches. A 
single cricket chirped with sickly cheerfulness 
from some chimney crack. All that was 
human being out of the way, the dubious 
procession of the night began to move, strange 
things coming out of holes and pattering 
across the floor ; swishing garments without 
bodies in them ; and wreckwood spirits, loosen- 
ing their crackling joints with groans. Out- 
doors the muffled sea murmured incessantly, 
loud or low in the varying wind as when 
mummers face about upon a stage. But such 
things disturb no sleep, not sleep, at any rate, 
like Bowl’s and Margaret’s ; and neither woke 
until the fishermen began to pass the cabin, 
their footsteps and hoarse oaths sharply distinct 
in the early morning. 

Margaret woke first, sore and weak, and 
full of a curious sense of unrelation to the 


44 


Doomsday 

world. She could see the table looming 
mistily in the half light, and Bowl’s boots 
under it, like blots of ink. There was no 
sign of ceiling to the room, but a single star 
shone in the gray window-checkered sky. 
How long she watched the star or what she 
thought, she could n</t afterward have told, 
nothing making great impression in her mem- 
oryless mood. When Bowl woke, drawing 
his sprawling legs under him heavily, she got 
up, and, walking dizzily across the room, 
washed her face and tangled hair. The 
cold water hurt, but revived her ; and she 
reset the table, moving carefully about the 
room, fearful of disturbing her now mirth- 
less husband, or rather lest she disturb the 
silence ; for neither spoke nor looked toward 
the other. 


XI 

T HE earliest fisherman on the beach, 
found the prophet up before him. He 
had righted the red dory, and pushed it half 
45 


Doomsday 

into the water, but leaned motionless against 
the stern when the islander made him out, 
his great head fallen on his breast. 

The fisherman had heard forgotten things 
that night, came trembling from his love’s 
second advent, and he passed without a word. 
Most of the dorymen followed his example, 
but some of Bowl’s companions, set in an- 
other humor by that worthy’s story of 
the prophet’s dumbness the previous day, 
stopped when they were opposite, and, look- 
ing suddenly toward each other, whirled 
their shouldered oars as if to brain him, which 
they would have done had he not put up 
his hand. 

“More life than yesterday !” one of the 
dorymen gasped, when he stopped, after 
spinning half around from the unresisted force 
of his own blow. 

“Guess nobody’ll smite him on the right 
cheek or left, to-day!” another chuckled. 
“Yesterday must have been the day he re- 
members to keep holy. To-day’s Monday 
in his religion, probably, a day off.” 

46 


Doomsday 

“He’s off, more like,” a sullener, called 
Grumpy Joe, sneered, “scared by something 
in the night. He ’ll be gone when we come 
back.” 

“I shall come back, but you will not.” 

Grumpy Joe’s scornful guess and prophecy 
had brought the red dory man upright on his 
feet, and he towered above them, all inde- 
cision gone, and speaking like an oracle. 

“You will not come back ! ” he repeated, 
pointing toward Grumpy Joe, but straining 
his eyes as if at something far away, and his 
voice falling into odd whisper, weird in the 
ears of all, but tolling to the sullen man. 
Involuntarily, every one looked up ; but all 
they saw was the gray sky of other mornings, 
and they crept to their boats with sickly 
laughter. 

“ He ’ s crazy as a loon ! ’ ’ one of them 
whispered beneath his breath. 

“ Crazy as a loon ! ’ ’ the others echoed ; 
but all avoided their sullen fellow, who avoided 
all of them. 

Grumpy Joe laughed to himself over the 

47 


Doomsday 

prophecy, but it was rueful laughter. He 
knew his mates believed the prophecy would 
come true, which was uncomfortable enough 
without the contingency of fulfilment ; and 
he searched the cracks in his boat as he shoved 
it off, wondering if the end would come 
through them, or striving to see through them, 
as the mad prophet had looked through his 
strained eyes. 

They had been delayed by the unlucky 
meeting, and it was almost day. Great rays 
of red, from the unrisen sun, split the clouds 
like brandished swords. No air was going, 
and the white sea reflected every sanguinary 
play ; only it was no play to the sullen islander, 
as the red reflection stained his boat, but a 
sign of wrath against him. Of course it was 
as much against the rest ; but the devoted, 
whether of good or ill, never think of this, 
such egoists are they. 

The forenoon passed without anything 
unusual. Fish are always fickle, and there 
were moments when they bit faster than the 
dorymen could pull them in, and long hours 
48 


Doomsday 

without a tremor on the dragging lines. Al- 
together, it was a luckier day than common, 
all the boats with one exception holding heaps 
of the spoil before midday. 

Whisper of what occurred in the morn- 
ing, liad spread throughout the fleet. Other- 
wise, no one would have noticed that nothing 
seemed to take the cursed man’s bait ; for fish 
are fickle, as I say, and such things often 
happen, with no other comment than the 
maledictions of the unfortunate. But when 
a man has been so startlingly distinguished as 
Grumpy Joe, every peculiarity becomes mo- 
mentous. Noon came, however, without 
anything more dispiriting, and the islanders 
began to think their mate’s doom imaginary ; 
a change of opinion quite confirmed when, 
early in the afternoon, he threw out a larger 
hook which was hardly overboard before a 
huge fish ran away with it. 

Grumpy Joe fought his prey with all the 
cunning of his art, and the added desperation 
of those who fight with fate. It was his 
idea of fate. If he held on, he must land 
49 


Doomsday 

the fish, or the dory would be swamped. No 
fisherman, however cursed, would let go ; 
and after a fierce half-hour, much pounding 
of the sea, and bloody sawing of his fingers, 
he finally had the catch of the day in tow, 
and, with some help, in his dory. 

All congratulated him, more heartily for 
feeling he had been evilly dealt with. As it 
was time to go in, they instinctively fell be- 
hind, allowing him to lead, which he did in 
a kind of triumph, his face smeared like a 
savage’s with his own bloody finger-prints, 
and laughing with fierce pleasure at the biting 
salt water in his wounds. “ Go back, in- 
deed ! he had never returned in so fine a 
way;” and he laughed aloud, all his sullen- 
ness gone, above his shining prey, and before 
the trail of rushing dories. 

The sun blazed overhead. There was no 
air astir. No one could have found the joint 
between the motionless sea and motionless sky. 
Every outline of the mainland hills was etched 
in both. Looking over his shoulder. Grumpy 
joe could see Thunder Island double in air 
50 


Doomsday 

and water ; but all he thought of was his 
single enemy. 

“I’m back again ! ” he shouted, at sight 
of the prophet, who was exactly where they 
left him in the morning, “ I ’m back again ! ” 
But the words were scarcely out of his mouth, 
before the fleet was on him, some twist of 
his forgotten oars having laid him broadside 
on their track. There was an awful crash, a 
single cry above the breaking wood, and when 
the fishermen recovered, a bit of empty water, 
across which floated an upturned, sullen, 
face. 

He may not have been dead, but the 
superstitious fishermen would not interfere 
with the undoubted doom of God. All 
waited on their oars, staring at the grue- 
some spectacle until it sunk ; then they 
silently rowed in, and passed the prophet, 
who was more speechless than the day before. 


51 


Doomsday 


XII 


HOUGH on the beach when the fisher- 



X rnen returned, the prophet had not 
waited there all day. He was going when 
Grumpy Joe and his companions found him in 
the morning, had shoved the red dory half 
into the water, half resolved to fly, as his 
enemies suspected, though none suspected what 
frightened him away. Some ghost out of the 
sea was in their minds, or one of the name- 
less, uncanny, spirits of the night. 

No one had seen Margaret outdoors, ex- 
cept her husband. Had they known of it, 
none would have seen anything in her visita- 
tion to occasion flight, though all were afraid 
of her as of something unusual ; but that would 
have given no inkling of the terror she woke 
in the prophet. Even he was ignorant of 
Margaret’s feeling toward him. He had 
eaten her bread without a thought of its sig- 
nificance, mentally chivalrous, or too much 
abandoned to his own passion to be curious 


Doomsday 

about hers. She had startled him as no 
wraith could have done, for he was in humor 
for the supernatural, whereas Margaret dis- 
covered all that was natural in him. He had 
come to the island trembling with unearthly 
things. Margaret met him, and her conjuring 
face drew all he had thought dead in himself, 
and things unknown, into vehement and 
dominating life. 

Love always discovers another man in us, 
sufficiently startling to those more ordinary than 
the prophet. He was panic-stricken, walked 
the beach, distraught, after Margaret left. 

God’s message was alone no more, was 
even unreal when Margaret spoke, but it had 
by no means passed. Its “All flesh is 
grass!” struggled with Margaret’s fair body 
in his consciousness. He had come to save 
men’s souls ; was he to wreck upon her body ? 
Better flee, and he had half launched the dory, 
a wild thought that it might be sweeter to be 
lost with her changing his mind before he 
got away. 

“ How sweet she was ! ” (She really lay 

53 


Doomsday 

upon the cabin floor, sopping her own blood. ) 
Her violet eyes looked on him from the dark. 
He thought her there, and stretched out his 
arms, wooing her memory ; and any lover 
knows such love-making is realer than the 
real. Anyhow, this shadow Margaret was 
real to the prophet in the breathless moment 
that he held her in his arms, and her lips to 
his. It was only a moment, but no one 
holds any woman longer, or finds more in 
one, though what we call real woman might 
not have abandoned him so utterly as did the 
shadow when that moment passed. 

When Margaret’s shadow self was gone, the 
prophet had turned once more toward the 
waters, or thought he turned to them ; he 
really had not turned after half shoving out the 
dory, wavering between mental emotions like 
a leaf, though rigid, bodily, as the sternpiece 
of the dory. 

What the prophet would have done had the 
sullen islander guessed farther from the truth, I 
cannot say. He might have gone, and the 
story ended here, if stories ever come to an 
54 


Doomsday 

end ; but Grumpy Joe’s savage gibe restored 
the mood as well as the gift of prophecy. 
So slight are the things that affect us, or so 
deep is fate ! 

Margaret had risen from the floor, and once 
looked across the beach ; but the prophet did 
not see her. He finally pushed the red dory 
off, but only rowed out to a bare rock called 
The Skull , where he remained until afternoon, 
with no other food than offal from the sea. 

There is a half acre in the place, but noth- 
ing green upon it except some draggled sea- 
weed growing on the rocks between the 
tides. On top it is level, and clean swept by 
the wind. The storms ride over it, but it is 
dry in summer. From it the prophet could 
see the fisher dabins, almost as plain as from 
the beach, near enough to have their doom 
reproach him, yet far enough to be alone with 
God. 

When he returned, his face had more 
exaltation in it than was in it the day before, 
and there vyas more in his voice that night 
than yestereven. 


55 


Doomsday 


XIII 



HIS is the year of God!” the 


J_ prophet cried out of the firelight to the 
huddling fishermen ready to believe anything 
at last, ci God’s harvest day, when He will 
thrfist His sickle in the human grain, and reap 
for heaven or hell. This is the awful year 
of God,” and he told them of that mysterious 
“ time, times, and a half,” or thousand and 
three hundred year-days, of the Prophet 
Daniel, which seem to set the world’s end. 
“This is the last year,” he reiterated, his 
insistent voice drawing a long sigh from the 
bent listeners, as it passed above their heads. 
“Gabriel set this year,” and, much as it 
meant to make it, his sincerity saved the asser- 
tion entirely to its masterful intent. In this 
humility, he told how Gabriel had cut off 
certain of the days or years by the death of 
Christ, leaving a fixed number to follow, all 
but the last of which had gone. 

The fishermen listened breathlessly, wrought 


Doomsday 

by the day’s event as much as by the strange 
things they heard. Grumpy Joe’s sullen face 
upon the sea had foredoomed them all. A 
year was longer, but might be no less fateful 
than that day had been to their lost mate. 
The only difference was that all now waited 
with sickly apprehension, swaying together, at 
every portent, as the other had alone. Their 
faces rose and fell beneath the prophet’s 
words, in subtle sympathy. 

“I see the Great White Throne, coming 
like a falling star.” The prophet had raised 
his eyes, and all followed with uplifted faces. 
Though everywhere else in the world men 
only saw quiet stars, what the prophet de- 
scribed was as plain to the fishermen as to him, 
and the dreadful sigh again escaped their 
stiffened lips, breaking into a muffled sob 
where some woman stood. “ He that sits 
upon it, has the books and turns the pages 
reddened with our names. See ! ” and it 
seemed to them that they did see. “ He has 
passed the middle of the book he holds, and 
hastens to the end. Now He reads the pages 
57 


Doomsday 

on which our fathers’ names are written, if 
they are there ; for it is the Book of Life. 
Now He lifts our leaf, looking down on us as 
it flutters back. I hear it rustle on the air.” 
Somebody shrieked. “ He puts his finger on 
the page, stopping at each name, or at the 
empty spaces where no names appear, because 
already written in another book. I can almost 
make them out upon His moving lips, as one 
counts the items of a balance sheet. It is His 
balance sheet, the profit and the loss of God ; 
for He loses and gains in us.” 

Another strain had come into the prophet’s 
voice, and silent tears crept down the fisher- 
men’s hard faces. 

“ God made us, gave us minds and hearts, 
spent all he had upon us ; now He inquires 
the profit, seeks love where He has loved so 
much. Do you not love Him ? ” A hush 
fell over all ; in it the prophet and fishermen 
seemed to look into each other’s hearts. 

What would have been the consequence 
had there been no interruption, I cannot say. 
Perhaps all would have fallen on their knees, 
58 


Doomsday 

around the fire that night, mingling their tears 
with those of the drowned beneath the sea ; 
but they were interrupted, Bowl’s ditty sud- 
denly floating down the beach, coming ahead 
of him, but breaking their mood effectually as 
his immediate presence would have done. 

Bowl seemed surprised when he came up, 
stopping his song with a long whistle, but he 
had lost none of his wits. Sticking out his 
elbows, he pushed roughly through the circle, 
pinching and kicking the shins of those he 
brushed against. He took no notice of the 
prophet, though he went quite up to him, but 
wheeled under his nose, and, looking con- 
temptuously around him, advised the islanders 
to go home to bed, with such a whining imita- 
tion of their terror that some of them laughed 
hysterically. 

“ Pull the sheets over your heads, and 
you’ll sleep well,” he said. “ Sleep is good 
for fools. I’m going to try the thing my- 
self ; ’ ’ and he strode off, leaving them to their 
embarrassment. 

Some had caught their breath when Bowl 

59 


Doomsday 


came, expecting him to meet the fate of the 
mocker of the morning ; but the prophet made 
no answer to his scorn. 

Margaret had come with her husband. 

One after another of the fishermen took 
Bowl’s advice, the speechless prophet their 
excuse, though they crept away shamefacedly. 

At last Margaret and the prophet were 
alone. 


XIV 



HE fire burned down to coals, blazing 


_t_ fitfully when some log of driftwood, 
eaten through, fell noisily on end. Back of 
the man and woman rose huge shadows, 
writhing as all firelight shadows do. An echo 
of Bowl’s song drifted faintly down the beach. 
Otherwise all was still, except their hearts, for 
neither spoke. 

They were going to speak. An “ I love 
you!” was in both their mouths, so sweet that 
they forgot the world and world’s end, or else 
they had gone blind at sight of each other, as 


60 


Doomsday 

men and women will, so love-stricken that 
all else was obliterated in the great darkness or 
light of themselves. We do not blame the 
blind for beating out their lives on rocks they 
cannot see ; we pity them. Why not pity the 
love-blind who are as helpless ? 

But these two asked no pity. Now I think 
of it, the love-blind never do ask pity. Their 
brethren of the fleshlier misfortune are the 
beggars. These are so blind they imagine 
themselves the only ones who see. Who 
knows that they are not right ? Any one 
who sees all in a lover, as they do, misses 
nothing because his absorption shuts out pass- 
ing faces. 

Margaret and the prophet did not touch 
each other’s hands, or approach each other 
closer than when left alone, afraid perhaps of 
breaking the sweet spell, or near enough. 
Each knew the other’s love, knew it without 
the words that hung upon their lips.' 

He had come only the day before, and they 
had scarcely spoken ; but already love seemed 
old, and so plain that they forgot the poverty 
6 1 


Doomsday 

of their opportunity. All hindrances were 
distant as the stars, and as unreal. His proph- 
ecies jangled somewhere in the prophet’s head, 
and there was a fresh scar on Margaret’s face, 
but both were felt no more than the song of 
the sea, entirely unheard. They were as much 
in fateful current as had been the dory. But 
the dory had been cast upon the island, and 
they were stopped short of actual speech. 

Both were stopped, for both saw the thing 
that separated them, the same moment. 
Whether it was Grumpy Joe’s uneasy ghost, 
as the fishermen afterward believed, or an 
angel, as the prophet thought, I cannot say. 
When Margaret and the prophet were first 
aware, it seemed above the spot where the 
sullen islander had drowned ; but it may have 
come across the sea, instead of from the sodden 
body in the depths. Possibly it was some 
shadow of the previous night, a whiff of fog 
white in the crescent moon, and blown upon 
the water ; but such laying of the supernatural 
does not relieve the imagination, and imagina- 
tion is worse haunted of all places. For that 
62 


Doomsday 

matter, man’s empty body wakes more horror 
than his ghost, and either is more horrible than 
foreboding angel. • 

Whatever the thing Margaret and the 
prophet saw, it came toward them, waving its 
shapeless height with awful life, and moving 
as spirit of the sea, or ghost, or angel of 
destruction might. The beach was no obstruc- 
tion, nor the firelight, though the last shone 
through it. It passed both, going between 
Margaret and the prophet, near to each other 
as they stood, each distinguishing muttered 
words: “ A month! a month!” then turned 
between the wreckwood cabins into the dark 
spruces, emerging, they thought, a moment 
after on the barren hilltop. Again the words 
or echo of them, and then it disappeared in 
the sea beyond, or dissolved upon the wind, 
or rose to heaven. 

Something more dreadful than the mysteri- 
ous words burst from Margaret’s lips, out of 
the fountain of her heart, she thought, tremu- 
lous and blind. She had not understood the 
words. “ A month,” had no significance to 

63 


Doomsday 

her ; but she had felt the cold accompanying 
the angel or the ghost, and knew it separated 
them, would have known from the prophet’s 
oblivious face, if nothing else had told her. 
She did not cry, choked possibly by the red 
tide on her lips, or numb, but fell back into 
the denser mist, the mist or ghost had left her 
in, groping through it for the wreckwood 
cabin and former things. 

It was worse home coming than the former. 
Then she had only the prophet behind her, 
and Bowl before her. If the prophet had 
been mysterious, he was at least flesh and 
blood ; Bowl was plain to her as the puddle of 
black water she had avoided. She had blamed 
the prophet, then, because he was still when 
God would have acted ; now, only God, or 
what seemed God, was behind her and before 
her, and was as much opposed to her. 

Margaret was the only one without super- 
stition on the island. She was no more afraid 
this time than she had been the other, and 
went home more unwillingly ; but it was some- 
thing new to find herself opposing God instead 

64 


Doomsday 

of man ; and though she may have nerved her 
spirit as she had her hands before, she yielded 
or seemed to yield, as she had seemed to obey 
her husband. God, or what men say is God, 
may have his way with us more thoroughly 
than men ; but that will not make us love 
Him, any more than it makes us love them. 

Bowl was asleep when Margaret found the 
cabin, his red face propped upon his arms, and 
shiny in the flickering candlelight, like a 
boy’s. She knew him when he was a boy, 
and something, his perspiring face perhaps, 
recalled those days. It was not a fortunate 
turn of mind for a repentant wife, if she had 
been repentant. Bowl had fathered himself 
too well in boyhood to give any one a liking 
for such recollections, much less the victim of 
his bullying cruelties, as Margaret had always 
been. 

What came out of the curiously conjured 
past was her fierce self opposed to the laugh- 
ing savage, and always beaten down by his 
brute strength. He had not frightened her in 
those days, no one had ever frightened her. 
65 


Doomsday 

What had enraged her was to be brave as 
he, yet be overcome because his arms were 
stronger than her own. 

The deep-water voyage had thrown a 
glamour over him, and his sudden liking of her 
after his return had seemed something new ; 
but she now saw that his love-making had 
been brutal as his previous tormenting. Their 
marriage was only another instance of his hate- 
ful power, more loathsome for his temporary 
masquerade. His barren lust was the man’s 
way of expressing what the boy had done 
with blows. 

She saw the whole process, the logic, the 
development of his unnaturalness, as she looked 
at him, and rejoiced that she still hated him. 
She had been weak upon the beach, and crept 
away bewildered, but Bowl’s face restored her 
fierce equilibrium. Her life was darker for 
the two days’ flash of love, but it had been 
dark before ; and she washed the blood from 
her lips, and took her place upon their bed, 
strong in her hate, if her love had been so 
weak. 


66 


Doomsday 

Across the beach, the prophet watched the 
barren hills from which the angel of the mist 
had gone, trembling because God was so near ; 
for so he understood the “ month.” 


XV 

B OWL’S humor had disconcerted the 
fishermen, but only temporarily. They 
went home to bed, but the prophet’s message 
rung about their ears all night, and Grumpy 
Joe’s sullen face looked them out of counte- 
nance. When the prophet emphasized his 
message and the drowning, the following 
night, with story of what had happened after 
they had left, omitting his and Margaret’s 
part, of course, an awful terror swept the 
beach. Every one except Bowl and Margaret 
was there, and all listened dumbly while he 
described the mysterious messenger and inter- 
preted its speech. None of the fishermen 
doubted his interpretation. Margaret might 
have doubted it. Bowl hooted the whole 
67 


Doomsday 

thing ^when he heard of it ; but Margaret was 
interpreting other things, and no one listened 
to Bowl. 

They fished interruptedly afterward, just 
enough for food from day to day. Why 
work for more when in a month all would eat 
or starve in heaven or hell ? Not that any 
one so argued. It was unconscious logic. 
What they faced was too tremendous, too en- 
grossing to be argued. The real, the wild, 
the emotional, in them, was given panic free- 
dom. The “ month ’ 9 was exactly like that 
moment after a ship has struck upon the 
rocks. 

They accepted all the consequences of their 
sudden faith without dissimulation, pitching 
their lives almost savagely to the prophet’s 
heroic tune. Ownership in anything earthly, 
even in the poor wreckwood cabins, was too 
much like partnership with the world ; so they 
cleansed themselves by giving all away, as 
there was no one else to receive, to Bowl, 
who took their written deeds, as his own jokes, 
with sardonic laughter. You smile with him, 
68 


Doomsday 

but I do not; for such folly shows the race 
still capable of heroism. Without such things, 
one might think all lost in Judas’ love of 
money. 

There was no more faltering on the prophet’s 
part. Almost all his days were spent upon 
The Skull , and he preached or prophesied 
every night. It was terrific pace, and he 
wasted under it, his bronze skin drying on his 
bones, and his glowing eyes falling deeper in- 
to his head every day, increasingly brilliant as 
they receded. But he seemed to lose no 
strength. Like his eyes, he burned brighter 
for his great consumption, his voice striking 
some new note every day, and carrying the 
people on his will, though his demands were 
always greater. It was a kind of madness. 
Everything in him was moved ; yet in all the 
ecstasy and despair of those wild days he was 
outwardly the calmest. Perhaps it was be- 
cause he still kept himself apart. 

The islanders now begged him to receive 
their hospitality; but, excepting Margaret’s 
bread that first night, he took nothing from 
69 


Doomsday 

any, feeding upon what first came to his hands 
from the sea, or fasting, and housed by the 
red dory. It separated him from them, but 
gave a height from which his message fell 
with added force. Even Bowl confessed his 
sincerity. The rest listened as to one from 
heaven. 

Far as the fishermen knew, the red dory 
man might have come from heaven. He 
never spoke of himself, or let slip a sentence 
of the past. He might also have come from 
some awful crime, expiating it among them by 
such penance. Or he might have been in- 
terrogator of holy things a lifetime, as fish- 
ermen sometimes are, and admitted to his 
knowledge of the future, as reward. He 
might have come out of almost any past ; 
but all he was to the islanders was a voice — 
when you think of it, the most comprehensive 
of all things. 

You must not think all the islanders’ emo- 
tion mere sound and fury. I have already 
told how wives and husbands came together 
at the prophet’s cry. Strange thefts were 
70 


Doomsday 

confessed. An old man told, with staring eyes, 
how he had choked to death an exhausted 
passenger from some wreck, for his money 
belt, and afterward flung him back into the 
sea. It had happened years before, was 
grown over by a multitude of weedy incidents, 
or lost under a hard life, beaten so by drudg- 
ery and a thousand meaner happenings ; but 
all rent above it, at the prophet’s voice, show- 
ing the trembling old man, the purpling face 
of his victim as he had felt it beneath his 
fingers, nay, infinitely more distinct. The 
good were praised in the clear understanding 
of those days ; obscure men and women were 
thrust into happy prominence ; and shrinking 
souls, who had been the laughing-stock of the 
island, were almost envied. The judgment 
day had already come. 

But Margaret took no notice, and Bowl 
sang as much as ever. 


Doomsday 


XVI 

O NE day about the middle of the month. 
Bowl stumbled into a group that now 
was always gathered upon the beach. The 
prophet was not there, though the red dory 
was ; its owner, instead of going to The Skull 
as usual that day, having climbed the barren 
hill, as he sometimes did, to brood upon the 
spot where God’s messenger had risen. 

Sight of the dory moved Bowl to a sudden 
inspiration : 

“I’m a prophet, too!” he cried, lifting 
his voice into a cracked imitation of the red 
dory man’s. There were lowering looks and 
uneasy gestures, but no one moved a foot, or 
answered. 

“Just as good a prophet as the master of 
this bloody craft,” he sneered, jerking^ his 
thumb towards the dory, “ and what I’ve 
got to say’s a thousand times pleasanter to 
your bellies. Have any of you thought how 
wry this fellow’s talk is upon your bellies ?” 
7 2 


Doomsday 

Bowl was smiling quizzically, sweeping his 
arms about with all the old inclusive intimacy ; 
but the islanders only looked the sourer. 

“You must be thirsty as the fish you’ve 
forgotten how to catch. Come, have a drink, 
men!” and he pulled out his bottle, well 
known to all, and slowly passed it round. 

No one even shook his head. 

“Won’t have one? You won’t hear a 
word with your dry gills, but what I’ve got 
to say is this : This fellow knows no more of 
Kingdom Come than I do!” 

Some of the crowd began to edge away ; 
others looked apprehensively toward the bar- 
ren hill. 

“ You’re scared because Grumpy Joe hap- 
pened to go under, the day yonder frog be- 
gan croaking. D’ ye think he swamped the 
boat ? I’m not afraid of him ! ” and walking 
down to the red dory. Bowl began to shove 
it off, puffing with the effort. 

Margaret had come up while Bowl was 
talking, and when the dory floated, ran down 
and leaped into it, before Bowl was ready, 
73 


Doomsday 

plainly disconcerting him ; but he scrambled 
after, and fell tipsily upon a thwart. It was 
floodtide, and the boat swung broadside on. 
Bowl was out of practice, but managed to 
get out the oars, and again shove off far 
enough for room, when he fell a-rowing, 
splashing wildly, but slowly leaving the 
beach. 

Still no one moved a foot or hand to stop 
him. 

Bowl wanted to demonstrate the prophet’s 
powerlessness to hurt any one, but he soon 
found he had no time for such intention. 
Once he could have rowed his oar with any 
man, though too drunk to get off the thwart ; 
now the dory was crank under him as a log. 
Do what he would, and he was soon sober 
enough to see he must do all he could, the dory 
lurched from side to side faster than he could 
right her, and Margaret offered no help. In- 
deed, he fancied that she aided the dory instead 
of him, as soon as they were beyond their 
depth. At first her inclination was scarce per- 
ceptible, no more than following the motion of 
74 


Doomsday 

the boat instead of resisting it, though that 
would have swamped them had she continued 
long enough. Instead of stopping. Bowl dis- 
covered that she was deliberately throwing 
herself from side to side. 

“ You ’ll drown us, damn you ! 99 he swore 
with purpling lips. 

She looked at him, so cruelly that he gasped, 
and whispered : <c What did you suppose I 
came for ? ” 

He was at her mercy, would have been, 
perhaps, had he not lost his skill ; as it was, 
he could not lift either hand from his oars, or 
try to stop her, without precipitating her 
desire. His own body was against him, un- 
steadily imitating Margaret’s motion, in its 
drunken possession, instead of the instincts of 
his now perfectly sober mind. His very bulk, 
which otherwise could have been thrown 
against hers and more than negatived her 
efforts, hastened the end, following her awful 
measure with accelerating rhythm, grimly urg- 
ing on the dance with death. 

Back and forth they swung, shipping water 

75 


Doomsday 

every lurch, each wondering, with different 
emotions, if the next would hurl them into 
the swallowing sea. Neither spoke. Things 
were too plain for words, and wicked as 
Bowl was, he was not a coward. He saw 
the grisly end, even thought how it would con- 
firm the fears of the fishermen, but put up no 
prayer to God or Margaret, awaited his fate 
without a smile or tear. 

Margaret exulted. At last she was the 
stronger. There was much to be avenged, 
but her opportunity had come, and she took 
it without pity. It would be horrible punish- 
ment, the last and greatest for such a sinner ; 
but Bowl deserved it, and she was taking all 
she gave. She flung herself savagely from 
side to side. She had not known she was so 
strong. There was something almost joyous 
in her rage, and she gave herself up to it 
without reserve. Up and down the wild 
craft jumped, its red sides seeming to have 
caught her fury. It tipped, and turned, and 
as Margaret whispered a terrible farewell, 
leaped into the air, flinging its occupants be- 
76 


Doomsday 

neath it wrathfully, and then floated ofF 
bottom up, and redder than ever, while the 
man and woman sunk into the shivering 
depths. 

And still no one moved upon the beach. 

But the prophet was hastening down the 
hill. He had seen the launching of his dory 
from the barren outlook, and, divining both 
passengers’ intentions, hurried to prevent 
them. The hill is half a mile above the 
beach, however, and in spite of his running, he 
appeared too late. When he reached the 
beach, all he could see was his upset dory. 

Stripping himself without hesitation, he 
leaped into the water, and swam out with great 
strokes toward the capsized boat. Reaching 
it, he righted it skilfully, and, leaping in, 
hurriedly secured both escaping oars, and then 
leaned across the gunwale, waiting for the 
dory’s victims. 

Margaret rose first, and he drew her in, 
white, and dripping, and limp, in his arms, as 
a trodden flower, — the white flower upon the 
hill, which she was like. The other flower 
77 


Doomsday 

her eyes were like, was plucked ; for she did 
not look up to him while he held her, or when 
he put her down upon the seat from which 
she had just been flung. 

When Margaret was easy as he could make 
her, and it is not hard to make the dead com- 
fortable, or the seeming, he returned for Bowl. 
But Bowl had gone straight down like a stone, 
and stood in the ooze, fascinated by the 
soft carpet, or by the posturing men and 
women on it. He would have stayed there 
always, becoming one of the bowing or be- 
seeching men himself, had not the diving 
prophet shaken him out of his dream, and 
lifted him to the surface and into the boat 
again. He was wide awake when the prophet 
got him in the boat, and sat up, though 
cold and miserable. It is uncomfortable to 
wake too suddenly, even out of death. 

Margaret never stirred, though the prophet, 
who had turned his back to Bowl sitting for- 
ward, stared upon her all the way ashore. 
He took her in his arms again when they 
touched the beach, and, motioning Bowl 
73 


Doomsday 

to precede, carried her after him across the 
sands she had so often walked, twice for him, 
and, taking her into the wreckwood cabin, 
put her upon the cursed bed, and left her 
with her husband. 

He thought her dead, and thought it well ; 
but she was not dead. Bowl, cunninger 
than he or more malicious, brought her to 
life, rubbing her hands and feet, and rolling 
her from side to side, and breathing on her as 
God on man at the beginning. 

If Bowl did an evil thing in bringing 
Margaret back, he atoned for it by fleeing 
from the cabin before she opened her eyes, 
and avoiding her during the remainder of the 
month. 


XVII 

B OWL did not reform. He recog- 
nized his indebtedness to the prophet, 
and paid it by avoiding him as much as he 
did Margaret. Another might have thought 
the debt required faith in the world’s end, but 
79 


Doomsday 

he was shrewd enough to see that would have 
been over-payment. It is not written that 
the man who saves my life may not be a fool, 
or that I should from that day think him less a 
fool. Only a fool would have saved me, 
very like. I must not laugh at him after- 
wards, can only pity him, but pity may be 
worse than laughter. 

Whatever change there may have been in 
Bowl’s feeling, no one on the island was 
aware of it ; for all the islanders avoided him 
as much as he avoided Margaret and the 
prophet, horrified, though it was illogical, by 
his ingratitude, and as the deluded always are 
by those who are not in their delusions. 

Among the things Bowl had acquired in 
fortune’s unique pursuit of him, was all the 
rum upon the island. Perhaps I should not 
say fortune pursued him in this case, for the 
islanders would have broken jugs, and demi- 
johns, and kegs, upon the beach, had he not 
frantically stopped this surpassing folly. As 
it was much was lost, many of the fishermen, 
sterner than the others or of a vivider imagi- 
80 


Doomsday 

nation, having poured their liquor into the 
prophet’s fire. What he rescued. Bowl stored 
in an abandoned fish-house, which after the 
incident of the red dory became his home. 
The deeds to all the wreckwood cabins would 
have elated some men ; Bowl stuffed them 
through the bunghole of the first empty keg, 
forgetting which when the next was empty ; 
but the other contents of the fish-house ex- 
cited emotions in him such as yellow money 
stirs in almost every one. He was prodi- 
giously spendthrift, alas ! but the two emotions 
that contradict each other flatly elsewhere, 
exist good-manneredly together in a demi- 
john ; and Bowl counted each unemptied 
vessel, after every absence, rubbing the fat 
demijohns gleefully, or shaking them with the 
delight with which other misers ring their 
coin. Among them he forgot Margaret and 
the prophet, but another thing was more 
troublesome. 

Bowl had been unconscious throughout his 
short stay under sea, but he seemed to remem- 
ber all the creatures of the ooze, or else the 

81 


Doomsday 

event had marvellously quickened his imagina- 
tion. At any rate, whenever he was in the 
fish-house, perhaps because it was built half 
over a bit of the deeper cove where the slow 
swell always muttered, all the slimy and 
weird inhabitants, below, crowded into his 
mind, wriggling or swaying past him un- 
cannily. 

Bowl thought at first that it was the liquor, 
and reduced his potions, but this made no 
difference. His ditty frightened them away, 
but some sense of incongruity rarely let him 
strike it up. 

“Made for another cruise! ” he would 
croak with half the song still in his mouth : 
“I must have another ditty.’ ’ But he re- 
membered none appropriate ; and his own 
imagination, in spite of its excitement, re- 
fused to work in the desired direction. 

“Here I am,” he complained one mid- 
night, sitting bolt upright on the fish-house 
floor, though mentally upon the usual cruise, 
“ squat in the mud, before this grinning son 
of a tarpaulin, for half a watch, and he hasn’t 
82 


Doomsday 

said a word. Damned if I understand why 
he wags his jaw so much, with nothing to 
say ! Hey there, mister, what *s bothering ? ” 
Evidently the skeleton, he thought he saw, 
was dumb as ever, for he continued grumbling. 

“ I come down here to see you — Ough ! ” 
he gasped, jumping back from an imaginary 
pollack that had grazed his cheek. <( I 
acknowledge that I come unwillingly ; but can 
you expect more from a man whose flesh still 
sticks to his bones ? Anyway, I ’m here, been 
coming here a hundred years,” — it was 
really only a day or two that he had imagined 
such things, — “ and not a man of you, if you 
are men, has ever had manners enough to say, 
‘ How d 9 ye do ? ’ I should have to answer, 
‘ Poorly ! ’ I know ; but, confound you ! how 
can you expect a man in my fix to say any- 
thing different here?” 

“ Now, if I were you,” he continued, 
“ and you came here as I do, instead of jump- 
ing up and down, or sliding about making 
horrible faces, or horrible looks with what are 
not faces, I would hitch up my trousers and 
83 


Doomsday 

say, * Pleasant day ! 9 I know ’t would be a 
lie down here, but ’t would be sociable, and I 
don’t know any place where such a lie ’d be 
more excusable. When we got acquainted, 
you ’d tell me — you ’d be me, you remember 
— you’d tell me all going on above where 
everybody’s flesh sticks to his bones, and I’d 
tell you how I lost mine ; creepy to talk about, 
I know, but not half as creepy as wagging one’s 
jaws the way you do, without ever a word. I 
wouldn’t choose to sit in a grave, any more 
than I choose to come here ; but, hang me ! if 
I had to, I would like to talk with the corpse. 
If I were you, and you were me, and I knew 
any old song, kinder cheery, you know, I 
would sing it to you. You don’t happen to 
remember one, do you ? ” Bowl anxiously in- 
quired, forgetting his part. 

Whether the skeleton had once been a poet, 
I cannot say ; but Bowl thought he looked 
a little more human, and imagined he stopped 
his wagging jaws as if thinking. 

“I’m sure you do,” Bowl urged en- 
couragingly, ludicrously imitating more ordi- 

84 


Doomsday 

nary request for a song, and strange to say was 
rewarded in something the same fashion. 
The imaginary skeleton, that had heretofore 
stood so uneasily, sat down on a rib of the 
wreck in which he had sunk, and throwing 
one rattling leg over the other, began singing 
in a cracked voice : 

(( O Davy Jones, you ’ve a queer lot of bones. 
Queer lot of bones to me, 

Solemn, and cold, and horrible old ; 

You’n’ me wouldn’t ever agree.” 

Ci That song used to do me good when I 
was fat as you are,” the skeleton said after the 
last flourish, which he had seemed to sing with 
most energy, drumming out the “ would n’t 
ever agree,” with odd gesticulations upon the 
rib of the wreck, very much as Bowl had 
pounded out his tunes upon Margaret’s table ; 
“ but it does n’t sound as it used to, down 
here, at least to my ears. What do you think 
of it?” 

But Bowl had jumped up when the skeleton 
began singing — so real were his delusions — 
85 


Doomsday 

and was backing out of the imaginary waters, 
or across the fish-house floor, too much sur- 
prised to answer. He was not sure, but 
thought the skeleton smiled just as his head 
emerged, or as the side of the fish-house brought 
him to his normal self with a sudden shock. 

The sea whispered in and out among the 
piers below. A sighing wind crept around 
the fish-house, followed by the dull roar of the 
breakers. Morning was slipping through the 
chinks and narrow windows. But all these 
were unreal beside the curious song Bowl had 
heard, which followed him out of the sea, and 
broke from his lips, in the half light of morn- 
ing, in louder imitation of the uncanny singer 
under sea : 

“ O Davy Jones, you ’ve a queer lot of bones, 
Queer lot of bones to me, 

Solemn, and cold, and horrible old ; 

You ’n’ me would n’t ever agree.” 

€€ That’s exactly how I feel,” he laughed, 
sobering immediately, as was proper, and filling 
a battered dipper from one of the choicer demi- 
86 


Doomsday 

johns ; <c exactly how I feel,” he repeated 
critically, whether of the song or liquor it 
would be hard to say. Anyhow, he had found 
a spell against the magic of the sea, which he 
worked tirelessly the remainder of the month, 
not once returning to his former verse, and see- 
ing no more skeletons. So easy does a man 
forget ! 


XVIII 

M ARGARET was less troubled by 
what had occurred. Possibly Bowl 
only brought her half-way back to life, afraid, 
if he restored her former consciousness, 
the cruelty which had so startled him in 
the red dory would come into her face again. 
Her eyes were still closed when he left the 
cabin, and when she opened them were dull 
with stupor, wandering around the room un- 
interestedly, or fixed upon the smoky rafters 
overhead in vacant stare. The usual noises of 
the island went by her like the voices of a 
dream. She heard men whispering, beyond 
87 


Doomsday 

the door, without curiosity ; her rage had 
wrung her dry of all emotion. She lay so the 
remainder of the day, falling at dusk into an 
exhausted sleep. 

When she woke, the day was hours along; 
but she made no attempt to rise, conscious of 
her surroundings at last, though only of the most 
futile things. She tried to count the flies 
that buzzed about the room, and watched a 
spider spinning a web for them, with childish 
terror. A whiff of wind blew through a 
broken window from the hillside, and she 
wondered if the flowers she used to gather 
grew there still, eying, through her half- 
closed lids, the curly grass they sprung above, 
and remembering her breathless delight in 
first discoveries. The cropping ledges on the 
hill are covered with moss and lichens, rosy 
instead of gray, she saw with the surprise of 
Other days, and speculating whether they were 
flowers, in the old fashion. When the 
shadows lengthened in the afternoon, she 
watched them grow, as much persuaded it 
was magic as when a drowsy child ; and night 
88 


Doomsday 

caught her with the ancient soft astonishment, 
holding her still in the dark like enchantment. 
She was lying so, when the prophet’s voice 
rang across the beach, with its usual burden. 

Everything rushed back upon her with the 
voice, everything except her hate of Bowl ; 
that had gone with him, and her occasional 
glimpses of him afterward never stirred it 
again. She had not drowned him, but he 
was as dead to her as any murdered man, 
deader than some, for he had deserved to 
die, and desert lays any ghost. What had 
returned was Margaret’s hopeless love, vigor- 
ous as when the “I love you” had trem- 
bled on her lips, despairing as when she 
retreated from the angel or ghost of the mist. 
“ Alas that it, too, had not been lost at 
sea!” she complained, “so inutile and gro- 
tesque a thing as love ought to be washed 
away as easily as hate ; ” and she laughed so 
bitterly and loud the prophet might have 
heard. Perhaps he did hear and paused ; 
but when she caught her breath, listening for 
his answer, all the voice contained was the 
89 


Doomsday 

wrath of God, more terrible to her than to 
the fishermen. 

“You fools ! ” she frowned across the 
bed, “afraid of a peccadillo. Don’t you 
see I lose my life with every word ? 99 and 
then she turned upon herself, ashamed for 
even whispering in the dark. 

“Why should she love when he could 
forget ? ” 

How many have asked such question, and 
found the answer in the self-sufficiency of 
love, as she did before morning, without 
knowing it, — which is not strange, so illogical 
is such an answer ; but it is all many ever 
find, and, curiously, they become content 
without more. 

Margaret did not sleep at all that night, but 
morning found her refreshed ; and when 
breakfast was over, she took up her nets, 
knitting thoughtfully until noon. Brewing 
a cup of tea then, and cutting a thin slice 
of bread, she took both outdoors, after an 
old habit, partaking meditatively, more atten- 
tive of the blue sky and white sea, long way 
90 


Doomsday 

above and under her but touching lips in 
the far horizon, than of the closer realities 
of life. When she had eaten, she brought 
her nets into the sun, and once more began to 
knit, conscious of all the world before her, but 
throwing the white threads with deft instinct. 

Many of the fishermen were idling among 
the wreckwood cabins, she noticed with a 
frown of disapproval ; half the dories were 
not out. The red dory was gone, but she 
knew where, finding it without searching 
in the shadow of The Skull. When it re- 
turned, she was surprised to find herself as 
calm as over Bowl’s mad singing in the 
fish-house, which had begun at the coming 
of the red dory ; but she watched every 
movement of one, and was oblivious of the 
other. 

The prophet pulled in with long strokes, 
and Margaret’s needles fell unconsciously into 
their rhythm. When he beached his boat, 
the untied meshes fell ravelling into her lap ; 
and she leaned forward interestedly, though 
he never looked her way. She knew what 
91 


Doomsday 

he would do, but watched him gather wreck- 
wood for the evening fire as curiously as 
if she had not seen him do the same so 
many times. He had to go farther than at 
first ; but when some of the idlers of the 
day went to assist him, she inaudibly pro- 
tested. They shortened his activity ; and he 
might have come for some dark splinter of a 
wreck before her door, had they not interfered. 

When the fire was lit she picked up the 
nets, feeling for them in the dark, and carry- 
ing them into the cabin, left them there 
thrown carelessly upon the floor, and went 
down the beach with the other islanders. 

Margaret had no more faith in the world’s 
end than Bowl, but what he thought amusing 
in the red dory man’s prophecies escaped her, 
because unheard. What she went to hear 
was the voice that said so much more than 
words. The islanders had lost this deeper 
sense in their superficial terror. Wives and 
husbands had looked into each other’s hearts 
when they first heard the voice ; the later 
strain set them jangling, near as they thought 
92 


Doomsday 

themselves to God ; but Margaret had not lost 
the deeper note. Her ears sung with it while 
the red dory man prophesied, entirely missing 
his intent, but really hearing him, and going 
home comforted. 

Margaret was always present afterward, 
and the prophet always saw her, but was as 
blind to her reality as she was to his unreali- 
ties. It was wind and current over again, 
the righteousness that blew her from him hid- 
ing the deeper love in which she moved. He 
had not deliberately weighed righteousness 
against love, and coldly rejected love ; that 
would have been impossible in such a storm as 
he was passing. His strained attention was 
entirely occupied with what appeared the more 
terrific passion. He was yet to learn that 
storms blow out, and good and evil pass, at 
least in human minds, that these are only 
fickle waves upon the surface of unknown 
depths of love ; yet to learn that love, instead 
of conscience, is the real infinite in men, and 
all that is irresistible. He was blind now, 
but no more so than he had been to the cur- 
93 


Doomsday 

rent that threw him on the island. Some 
men never see ; nevertheless love throws them 
where it will, as easily as it disposes those, like 
Margaret, who understand and yield. 

At first Margaret recognized the reality in 
no one beside the prophet. The islanders 
swayed around her, as seemingly absorbed in 
terror to her as they were to him, though 
she was indifferent where he was pleased ; but 
gradually they too became plain to her, and 
a greater fear than theirs took possession of 
her. 


XIX 

T HE islanders had never troubled Mar- 
garet heretofore. She had accepted 
them as we accept the rudeness of nature, be- 
cause they were always present in her world. 
The forces that had made her fair had left her 
apart. Her childish play among the blossoms 
on the hill had been instinctive. She under- 
stood such things, or had unsatiable curiosity 
about them, but avoided the savage fisher chil- 
dren. Bowl, she was compelled to suffer as 
94 


Doomsday 

I have said, but it was because he forced him- 
self upon her, not because she was interested 
in him. Her own father and mother had 
been as far from her as an y, so far had they 
departed from the spirit of her conception, or 
so rare was that moment in their lives. 

Margaret’s marriage had brought her nearer 
the islanders than she had ever been. For a 
year she had made that pitiful attempt to 
comprehend their cares and desires which is 
repeated to some extent, and often success- 
fully, in every young wife’s life, though 
success may be piteous as failure. Margaret 
failed, as I have already said, and went back to 
the world from which she had come, forget- 
ting the islanders entirely, and as much as 
possible of Bowl. Her vision after that cruise 
in the red dory was not unusual. She could 
not climb the hill of the violets and white 
flower as often as in old days, but could see it 
above her drudgery, the white gulls rising 
over it like spirits, the swinging wind spilling 
its incense in her poor kitchen. 

Then the red dory man had come with his 

95 


Doomsday 

liberating love. The hills and stars were in 
it, all that birds sung and flowers know, and, 
above all, such weather as a woman’s heart 
can blossom in. Women do not love us 
for ourselves alone, but because we furnish 
greater opportunity for themselves. This is 
not selfishness in them, for they are sweeter 
for the gracious choice, and all their fragrance 
is for us. The more there is in us, the more 
they think of us ; for they are wise, the 
cheap wit of the world to the contrary. So 
love grows, until no man can measure it, or 
the content of it. 

Margaret’s opportunity was coming when 
the “ month ” and its folly were gone. 
Here was the secret of her peace. She could 
wait, love loses nothing by waiting ; and she 
would have watched without another word, 
smiling in her heart as much as any with their 
lips, at what lay beyond the €t month,” had 
not something in the islanders shown her a new 
danger, or foreshadowed a catastrophe infinitely 
more disastrous than her marriage to Bowl. 

It was the first time the islanders had ever 

96 




Doomsday 

interested her ; it was terrible interest, but it 
was real. She forgot the clear note sung by 
bird, and wind, and flower, along the upper 
places of her life, unmuffled heretofore even 
by her drudgery and sorrow, and hung breath- 
less upon the islanders’ incoherent exclamations, 
or excited discussions of the day of doom, 
reading with parted lips, and unmindful of 
the distortion of the day in their imaginations, 
the human nature out of which such emotion 
as theirs could rise. 

“ Ain’t you going to give up your things to 
git heaven?” an old crone once whined to 
her as she passed. 

Margaret had not seen the woman before 
she spoke, and caught her heart in the sudden 
surprise of her voice ; but the words were no 
shock. Nearly everything the islanders said 
was of a piece with them, though their motive 
was not often put so baldly. 

“ Did you give your house to save your 
soul?” she asked the hag, searching her eyes, 
hoping to find something less sordid and less 
selfish there. 

97 


Doomsday 

“ Of course, you fair fool ! Have you 
never read of the ‘ treasure in heaven ’ ? It’s 
a good old house ; ” she looked back of her 
regretfully, measuring the hovel she had sacri- 
ficed, by the pain and joy it had held for her, 
“but I kin let it go for a heavenly mansion,” 
squeaking the last words with indescribable 
cant. “ And did ye know, my fine one,” 
she squealed, “ that I am going to be as gay 
as ye are?” thrusting a clawlike hand at 
Margaret as if to pinch her. 

“ We are and shall be what God makes us, 
I suppose,” Margaret answered coldly, and 
went on, but not fast enough to miss the 
crone’s last screech : 

Yes, and when He gits you into hell. 
He ’ll make you over in a jiffy !” 

A crowd had gathered in the noise — 
crowds were easy to gather on Thunder Island 
in those days — but only one showed any 
sympathy with Margaret. The murderer 
looked up from his hands with tears as she 
went by, and whispered : 

“ Some of us are glad God comes, because 

98 


C of 0. 


Doomsday 

it will end so much. It can’t be worse after- 
ward than living here has been !” and Mar- 
garet thought he almost smiled. But all the 
others frowned upon her ; one great brute who 
had been mixed in more trouble than any 
other islander, and who had aimed the blow 
at the prophet’s head the morning Grumpy 
Joe had heard his doom, groaning to the bel- 
dame’s tune. 

The prophet was on The Shull when this 
happened, but Margaret saw as much of the 
islanders’ unchanged selfishness, while he proph- 
esied to them. Some of course were really 
glad. There were tired men and women who 
looked as she fancied Christ must have looked, 
so much did they desire Him, but most of 
them were speculating in divine things like 
Ananias. 


XX 

O NE night Margaret stayed to warn the 
prophet. He did not notice her, un- 
consciously forbade speech by turning toward 
99 


Doomsday 

his bed in the red dory, but her cry made 
him stop. 

“Do you know what these islanders will 
do to you, if what you tell them is not true, 
if this month of yours passes like all others? ” 

“ But I have told the truth,” he answered, 
without turning round. 

“ I know you think so, but what if you are 
deceived?” Margaret stammered, fearful of 
offending him. 

“ God deceives no one,” he answered 
calmly as before. 

“God!” Margaret echoed with consent, 
“ but how are we to know it is God who 
speaks ? ” 

“ You were with me when the angel 
passed,” he replied, turning round at last, and 
was about to say more when Margaret broke in. 

“Yes, I saw the mist, but all I under- 
stood was that it separated us.” 

“ It separated us,” he repeated after her, 
accepting her words as his own. 

Margaret gasped. She knew he thought 
their separation right and irrevocable, but his 
ioo 


Doomsday 

coldness surprised and hurt her ; it contra- 
dicted all that she heard in his voice every night. 
Could he have suffered ? She forgot his self- 
restraint under Bowl’s humiliating blow, could 
not understand his feeling that this blow was 
God’s, and to be endured with greater pa- 
tience, especially as it was so much deserved. 

The uncertain firelight darkened the proph- 
et’s always sombre face. Margaret’s ear 
caught the endless lament of the sea, with 
shivering affinity. “ Was her life also to be 
beaten out in white agony upon the rocks ? ’ ’ 
The thought broke in a sob upon her lips, so 
quickly lost in the throbbing undertone around 
her that the startling impression of her iden- 
tity with the baffled waters was complete. 
“ Her despair was only dragging undertow.” 
But she did not retreat this time, bold in her 
fear for him. 

“ You do not know these fishermen ! ” she 
cried. 

Something like a smile flitted across the 
prophet’s face. 

“I am a fisherman,” he answered softly. 

IOI 


Doomsday 

“ But not an islander/ ’ Margaret persisted, 
though her voice had also softened. 

“ No ! ” he admitted without interest. 

“ One of them once split a man’s head 
with an oar where we are standing. He did 
it because the wretch had stolen a single net.” 
She looked up meaningly, but if he understood, 
his voice betrayed nothing. 

“ God pity both ! ” he sighed, and stopped. 

“ For a single stolen net,” Margaret re- 
peated slowly. “How will they feel when 
your month passes, and they find you have 
taken everything ? ’ ’ 

“ I have not touched a line or sinker,” he 
answered sternly. 

“ Not with your hands, but you have taken 
all, nevertheless, all except one house, and that 
you might have had, for it is mine.” The 
prophet did not appear to notice her ill logic or 
that her voice had fallen into a whisper, and let 
her go on without interruption. But silence 
may be greatest interruption, must have been 
such to Margaret, for she wandered afterward, 
feebly repeating herself without force. 

102 


Doomsday 

“ My dory is empty as when I came,” the 
prophet said when she stopped, still ignoring 
her revealing generosity. 

“ I know,” she answered passionately, 
g€ but when the month is gone, will the isl- 
anders stop to think of that ? I think of it 
now, and it saves you for me ; but all they 
will remember then will be their loss, and 
your responsibility.” 

“ And they will kill me ? ” 

€t Yes,” she answered hoarsely. 

“ If Christ does not come, I had better die 
perhaps,” he smiled. A startling thought 
that he had just seen her shot across Marga- 
ret’s mind, but the smile soon passed his lips, 
leaving him as far as ever. 

Margaret knew it was useless to say more, 
but feeling it to be ineffectual will not stop 
entreaty. Love wanders blindly up and down 
the wall of life at such a time, hoping for some 
undiscovered even miraculous opening. Mar- 
garet would have been almost as much sur- 
prised as the prophet had she found a convinc- 
ing argument, anticipated his answers before 
103 


Doomsday 

made, almost watched to see if he departed 
from the answers she foresaw. Curiously 
enough, her own scepticism and lack of 
interest in his speculations underwent no 
change. All was as improbable as ever, even 
while he talked. 

“ Christ told His disciples no one knew the 
day, not even Himself,’ ’ was her last argument. 

The prophet’s answer, that the time of 
Christ’s coming was none the less in the 
Bible, and that men would look for Him, 
when the foretold years were gone, as they 
did at His first coming, was exactly what 
she expected him to say, but it found no 
assent in her. 

Ever so little of the prophet’s expectations 
would have comforted her ; as it was, she must 
wait the denouement with wide-eyed terror. 
Her forebodings had grown plainer as she 
talked, the awful probability shaping itself in 
her imagination vividly as something that had 
already happened, until she dropped into a 
staring silence which he made no attempt to 
break, but which was soon intolerable to her. 

104 


Doomsday 

She could do no more, and pulling her 
shawl about her head so closely it might 
have veiled a nun, she turned away without 
a word or gesture, and walked slowly home 
under the ignoring stars. 

“ O Davy Jones . . . O Davy Jones,” 
Bowl deliriously howled in the fish-house ; but 
Margaret passed unhearing, was as oblivious 
of the stars as they of her, and did not attempt 
to pray. The prophet and the fishermen 
could pray, and even Bowl in his fish-house ; 
but she was dumb, shut the wreckwood door 
after her when she had gone through, and did 
not open it again until the last day. 


XXI 

A S the last day approached, the islanders 
lost all restraint. Some of them sat 
upon the beach in a collapse, their heads and 
arms hanging helplessly, their half-shut eyes 
fixed vacantly upon the sand. They would 
have been insensible to any notice, but no one 

105 


Doomsday 

noticed them ; the restless who were by far 
the larger number, being self-absorbed as they. 
Some were wildly happy, laughing and shout- 
ing with hysteric joy, and counting sunrises 
and sunsets as men number the last miles of a 
journey. “ Seven days,” “ Six days,” “ Five 
days from now to God,” they would cry in 
middle night, and when alone. One, who 
had been first to give his cabin to Bowl, an- 
nounced the shortening time from his former 
doorstep every morning, saying, “ In four 
days,” or, “ In three days I shall move into 
the Golden City. ,, Another interrupted the 
prophet every night to announce his safety to 
his unheeding fellows. The unhappy filled 
the island with their prayers, turning their 
lives wrong side out before every one. Happily 
the evil were as self-absorbed as the good, and 
no one was wiser of their follies. 

The fisherwives were as much exercised as 
the men, moaning about their work, laughing 
excitedly, or degenerating into slatterns. 

Even the children forgot to play, frightened 
into corners by the half-understood panic of 
106 


Doomsday 

their elders, or dimly guessing and hiding 
from a sky that might rip open any moment, 
split by an angel’s flaming sword, and admit a 
terrifying multitude of fiery soldiers, giants, 
dragons, and goblins, into their out-door world. 
They associated this tragedy with the prophet, 
believing he was to give the signal, and shrieked 
dismally at his approach, or fled precipitately. 

If the prophet deprecated the excitement, 
he was powerless to prevent it. He could not 
change his message, softening it would have 
been betrayal. Its effect was wholly individ- 
ual. He had no more right to interfere with 
its impressiveness than he had to alter the 
fishermen’s free will, if such a thing were 
possible. He was only a voice, they must 
clothe the words in whatever action they 
would. It is God’s way, and any other is 
impertinence. 

Even Margaret’s warning only gave a sad- 
der exaltation to his voice. He might know 
the truth of her estimate of the fishermen as 
well as she, but anything to forestall their 
wrath was impossible, would have hinted fail- 
107 


Doomsday 

ing faith in him. He must speak, though 
pronouncing his own doom. Knowing what 
the fishermen might do only increased his dan- 
ger, the knowledge, in the subtle interrelation 
of his mind, emphasizing his sincerity, which, 
in turn, raised the islanders’ emotions ; but 
his sincerity saved him from all fear, if it could 
not save him from fate. 

He was entirely self-convinced by his mes- 
sage, had been before he cast himself into the 
sea, or what he had thought was the arms of 
God. He had forgotten it a moment for 
Margaret, bewildered by her, but he had not 
denied it. Love puts many things out of 
mind, but none out of existence. He had 
forgotten his faith, not lost it, which explains 
his instant obedience to the angel of the mist. 
A single doubt that night would have thrown 
him into Margaret’s arms; he had none, and 
unhesitatingly set the end of his love and the 
world. 

From what I have said you may think that 
all the islanders were self-absorbed, but that is 
not the case. The old man who had so fear- 
108 


Doomsday 

fully welcomed the ocean’s castaway, and ever 
since been afraid of his own hands, became a 
little child, and atoned for his misdeeds by 
longer cruises on the fishing-grounds, frying 
his catch with his own hands as soon as he re- 
turned, and gathering the neglected children, 
and all whom he could find, to eat it. It was 
real penance ; for somehow the islanders had 
gotten the idea that God would lose sight of 
them if away from the prophet, and that if 
they happened to be absent when He came 
they would be forgotten altogether ; but he 
made no complaint even when young men 
came to expect his bounty, meekly feeding 
them often without thanks, too glad to serve 
with clean hands to mind the humiliation of 
the service. He even woke one of the be- 
numbed with his pity, taking him out in his 
dory afterwards, the childlike old man and 
abandoned wretch fishing side by side in silence, 
one smiling through his tears over every fish, 
devoting it as soon as caught to some especial 
child, the other staring as the catch came up, 
as at so many curses. But both were better 
109 


Doomsday 

for the work, for anything was better than 
paralyzed waiting for the blow of God. 

So passed the days, the days that hurry or 
lag for no man’s anxiety or fear. Every 
islander was breathless with expectation. Bowl 
fearing another vision of the depths, Margaret 
the prophet’s death ; the prophet pushing his 
soul into a darker cruise than any dory red or 
otherwise has ever taken ; the collapsed wait- 
ing extinction ; the old fisherman weeping with 
pathetic joy over his clean hands, though they 
might soon be lifted up in hell ; and others 
increasingly happy as the Golden City fell 
towards them through the gloom. So much 
can men imagine ! 

The sea never omitted a note of its ancient 
song ; the shadows lost none of their mystery. 
Not a ghost in the sea stirred hand or foot. 
All the wreckwood cabins told their old 
tragedies without interruption, and the beach 
smiled ineffably as ever, in spite of the rest- 
less feet. The last day came without cloud. 


no 


Doomsday 


XXII 

A LL the islanders except Bowl, who 
had his own Doomsday , were up early. 
Margaret had not slept, and the others very 
little. They gathered around the burnt-out 
and blackened embers of the prophet’s last 
fire, their pallid faces lit or shadowed by the 
rising sun, but every one exposing as much 
emotion as if he were a naked soul ; for none 
of them were hypocrites. All expected God, 
though some thought more of His treasures 
than they did of Him. What Margaret had 
foreseen was not something hidden, but their 
expectant emotions transformed by disappoint- 
ment. 

The sun came up like a great red rose, 
blossoming in the garden of the world. All 
the misty sea and sky reflected the fair light ; 
and the warm air blew sweet upon the watch- 
ing faces. But no one thought how fair it 
was. Had not day blossomed this way 
hi 


a 


Doomsday 

thousand times ! What they were thinking 
of was that it was the last time the sun would 
rise. Such a sun was real archangel. 
Gabriel could not have awed them more. 

When the sun faded in higher heaven, the 
prophet pushed the red dory into the water 
for his usual trip to The Skull. But this 
time he was not to go alone, for the islanders 
expecting to be saved by being with him, as I 
have said, rushed after him, as many as could, 
into the red dory, scrambling across the dip- 
ping gunwales exactly as beggars elbow each 
other when the king bestows largess, and 
possibly as laughable a spectacle to God. 

All who could not get into the red dory 
launched their own in a kind of fury, some of 
them in such haste they pushed off with half- 
filled boats, so that the old fisherman and his 
gloomy mate had to return two or three 
times, before all were with the prophet upon 
the Golgotha . There was much shrieking 
on the beach, between their trips, so much it 
woke Bowl in the fish-house, who, thinking 
himself about to take his gruesome descent. 


I 12 


Doomsday 

roared lustily, merriment unappreciated even 
by himself. Once or twice the old fisher- 
man^ dory was almost capsized. He patiently 
righted it, however, pulling so hard upon 
single oar that he blistered his hard hands ; 
but he looked at them when the last child 
was with the prophet, and smiled softly to 
himself, for even his strained imagination 
could see no stain of the poor castaway’s life 
upon them. 

Margaret went among the last. She had 
been first at the prophet’s burned -out fire, 
leaving her wreckwood cabin before day- 
break, perhaps for one more warning ; but 
the prophet was still asleep, and she was 
afraid to wake him, or once more despaired. 
She had seen the vision of the sun with the 
rest, was the only one who felt its real 
mystery, and she could only regret its fairness, 
as the mourner is disturbed by laughter. She 
followed the others, because she did not know 
where else to go, and because the old fisher- 
man asked her. The prophet had not seen 
her, or ignored her, sparing her perhaps, or 
113 


Doomsday 

hurled away from her by the passions of his 
followers, himself had conjured. 

The islanders took the prophet’s trysting- 
place as if it were the gate of heaven, singing 
so fervently even the already damned among 
them were forced to join, though to a minor 
key. The prophet tried to speak, but all 
seemed suddenly inspired, prophesying with- 
out observing him or each other, — a pande- 
monium, had there been any sane enough to 
listen. 

Margaret remained among the boats jammed 
together on the narrow shingle where the 
islanders had abandoned them, the red dory as 
inextricably surrounded as its owner on The 
Skull above. At first Margaret took no notice 
of the dories, wandering aimlessly up and 
down the contracted space, her strained eyes 
empty of everything external. But one could 
not be long near so unusual a boat as the red 
dory and overlook it ; and it finally drew 
Margaret from her inexpressible anxiety, as- 
suming, in her startled consciousness, an awful 
symbolism. 

114 


Doomsday 

The prophet was always inseparable from 
his strange craft. In Margaret’s curious 
mood, he was now identical, and played out 
the last act of his life exactly as she had 
foreboded ; the blot the red dory made among 
the other boats quivering in her imagination 
like bloody flesh beneath infuriated feet. 
Crying wildly, she leaped among the crowded 
dories, hurling them aside with superhuman 
strength until she had cleared a way to the 
water, down which, half lifting, half caressing, 
she dragged the red dory, weeping upon it as 
a woman will upon her dead. The touch of 
water restored her sanity, her folly breaking into 
a pitiful half-smile upon her lips ; but she did 
not forsake the boat. Pushing it out as far as 
she could, without lifting it entirely from its 
self-anchorage upon the beach, she climbed 
into the stern, sitting there the remainder of 
the day, swung back and forth upon the ocean 
swell and the deeper heaving of her heart. 

Unable to be heard, the prophet had thrown 
himself upon the ground, as he would have 
done had he been alone. Some of the isl- 


Doomsday 

anders imitated him, gashing their faces upon 
the weather-eaten rock, but without his silence. 
One, entering more perfectly into the signi- 
ficance of the barren island’s name than others, 
whispered of bloodstain upon another Place 
of the Skull, washing his own ensanguined 
Golgotha clean with floods of reminiscent 
tears ; but most of them only reverted to the 
world-old superstition, cutting and hacking 
themselves like priests of Baal, heathen still, 
with almost all the world, under the Christian 
skin. 

Until noon there was no diminution of the 
islanders’ wild cries. Their lamentations 
seemed rather to increase, rising with the sun, 
as if no more than another of nature’s emo- 
tions, like the sea song instead of human prayers. 
They certainly had no more effect upon the 
course of things. The sun rose as on other 
days, smiling inscrutably upon the world. 
The sea missed no note to listen. Even the 
gulls only avoided the little island, fishing as 
usual, though in other waters. The last day 
was like all other days to itself and them. 

116 


Doomsday 

After noon, some consciousness of the day’s 
usualness became apparent among the islanders. 
The noisiest stopped praying first. Then one 
after another of the damned ceased moaning. 
By mid-afternoon, only the old fisherman 
prayed, and he had prayed all the time so 
softly that his voice was now no interruption 
to the silence. 

Every one looked into the faces of the rest, 
or into the sky, or across the sea, some un- 
certainly, some with breathless relief. Still 
no one left the prophet, or noticed Margaret 
in the swaying dory. The day was not en- 
tirely gone ; or the ominous emotion Margaret 
had feared was already rising in them. 

Children began to whimper with human 
weariness, and were fretfully chided by 
mothers worse scared than in the morning. 
Men stood up and stretched themselves, catch- 
ing glimpses of their lost wreckwood cabins, 
that set them scowling. But nothing broke 
the prophet’s silence. 

What he saw with his face to the rock, no 
one ever knew, all one ever sees whose face 
1 17 


Doomsday 

presses the impenetrable, I suppose, falling 
from one delusion into another possibly, pos- 
sibly learning to trust himself to the depths of 
his own life instead of guesses about God. 

And still the sun fell through the cloudless 
sky ; and the sea sung on as since the world 
began; and the white gulls fed themselves as 
if for morrow’s flight. 

The islanders’ faces darkened, or the sun 
was setting in them as well as over the world. 
The children now cried aloud, and their mothers 
struck them upon their mouths ; for the cries 
made the mad men worse. Your child can- 
not eat a stone, — all that was left by their 
folly. Besides, it is no easier to be God’s fool 
than another’s. But no one laid a hand up- 
on the prophet. Perhaps his silence saved 
him, or was it memory of Grumpy Joe ? • 
When the sun set, the prophet lifted his 
face from the rock, and looked around as if 
asking what the islanders would do. No one 
answering, he rose and walked slowly down 
the slope of The Skull, through the gray 
twilight, towards Margaret and the red dory, 
1 18 


Doomsday 

followed by a disordered crowd that almost 
trod his heels, their hot breath burning him. 
Some stooped for stones ; others shook doubled 
fists at him, as hard and merciless as stones; 
and others clawed the air ; but the prophet saw 
nothing, for he did not look around. He 
smiled faintly when he saw Margaret in the 
red dory, but pushed off without speaking. 

“ You cannot save me this time,” Margaret 
said defiantly, perhaps thinking of the day 
when he had drawn her from the water’s 
arms. 

“ No ! ” he answered, his love rising in his 
eyes, “ both of us are lost ; ” but he sent the 
red dory into the dark with even strokes. 

The islanders had stared stupidly upon the 
red dory, unable to perceive the fate that 
carried its master and Margaret away, or to 
guess that this was Doomsday . After the red 
dory man had left them, some still clutched 
the stones they had picked up on the way down 
The Skull , forgetting why they had gathered 
them, their minds still tossed between the 
wind and moon. They could not yet com- 
119 


Doomsday 

prehend that all their adventure with the 
supernatural had been between the wind and 
moon, or that they also were adrift in the 
inevitable. But when the red dory was gone, 
they shoved off their own boats, and heavily 
rowed toward the little beach and wreckwood 
cabins, returning, though unconsciously, to the 
imaginations of that deeper common life out 
of which none escape, except in fancy, how- 
ever much they curse or pray, or none except 
such as the old fisherman. 

Some one who went out to The Skull 
the next day to look for a lost trinket, found 
him, dead, where he had knelt all the day 
before, God having come later than the others 
looked and found none else to take. 

But death is most inevitable of all. 


XXIII 

L ONG ago, when men lived out of doors, 
they trembled before fate. The naked 
shepherd or sailor recognized his helplessness. 


120 


Doomsday 

There was community between them and the 
brown earth and restless sea. None mistook 
himself for more than earthen flower, or 
thought himself more permanent than wave. 
Life and death were only April day and 
October weather, and love unresisted burst of 
blossom. 

Now we wrap our round bellies in warm 
flannels, and jingle coin to drown the sweet 
voice of the god. Love, owl-wise in a corner, 
blinks out of doors. The shepherd and shep- 
herdess are gone. Pale maids sit upstairs, 
while shysters quibble over dowries and settle- 
ments by spluttering candlelight below. 

Men have shut themselves indoors, but 
there is as much outside as ever. We think 
the world has shrunken because our own in- 
ventions have grown great, but April and 
October are still months of the year, and life 
and death begin and end us, entirely as ever. 
The brown earth blossoms still, and men still 
love, therefore the often catastrophe to our 
conventions. All we have done is to invite 
catastrophe ; fate still has its way. 


1 21 


Doomsday 

Fate had its way with Margaret and the 
prophet, easier because fisherfolk have been 
slower to abandon the old faith, having de- 
parted least of any from the ancient intimacy 
with nature. Fisherfolk have less confidence 
in their sickly imaginations, though they may 
temporarily abandon themselves more wildly 
to them, as we have seen the red dory man 
and the islanders ; but when their imaginations 
are exploded they make no attempt to rebuild 
the fragments into another theory, frankly re- 
turning to natural sanity. Landsmen would 
afterwards piece the shattered prophecies into 
a dozen successive world’s ends, scaring hys- 
terical city folk whenever put together ; but 
the red dory man, rowing into the twilight, 
forgot all, as one forgets a dream. 

Margaret, always pagan, laughed softly to 
the tune the water sung beneath the dory’s 
run; the creaking oars played something mer- 
rier, both outsinging Bowl and the island 
breakers, as a second husband’s whisperings 
smother a first husband’s dirge. Sour individu- 
als call this fickleness. Ignoramuses ! A wife 


122 


Doomsday 

or husband gives herself or himself to love, 
making no pledge to ghost alive or dead. 
Bowl was not even ghost to Margaret, and 
she accompanied the red dory man — now 
only a red dory man — whole-hearted as a 
maid. 

The even strokes sent the boat back into 
the current, from which the island had caught 
the wanderer for a month. There was no 
wind, and the tide rested between ebb and 
flood. One great star after another lit the sea, 
— great stars that are so dumb to those who 
would have them stammer human speech, and 
such unerring guides to all the wise. Under 
them, their fateful children fled, the red dory 
man swinging back and forth upon his oars, 
lifting a smile to Margaret’s lips or eyes, 
every time he raised his face, but neither 
spoke. Forth to speechless fate they went, 
becomingly disappearing in the blinding star- 
light, without gesture or backward glance, as 
oblivious of lean old men like us, who won- 
der if there be any God beside current and 
love, as passengers of Styx are of the staring 
123 


Doomsday 


eyes of those who wonder whether they will 
ever see their dead again. Both fare into 
blinding starlight. 


XXIV 


HEN the fishermen returned to 



T V Thunder Island, they found Bowl, 
sitting in the ashes of the prophet’s fires, stark 


mad. 


“ Aye there. Old Bones,” he shouted as 
the first man sprang ashore, “ you ’ve come at 
last, and all your mates ! ” 

The islanders were a ghostly lot after the 
day’s fasting, excitement, and in the shadowy 
twilight ; and all were too much surprised by 
Bowl to speak. 

“I’ve expected you all day,” he com- 
plained. “ Afraid the sun would boil the 
bilge water in your marrow, hey ? It has 
been hot and dry, horrible dry ! Say,” he 
whispered, peering cunningly into their startled 
faces, “ you have n’t any rum?” 


124 


Doomsday 

Somebody shrilly laughed, hushing breath- 
less the next instant. 

“No?” Bowl went on dispiritedly. “I 
can’t sing without it, and every demijohn on 
the island ’s dry. I sucked the last one, like 
a squalling young one, all last night. It’s 
empty, but not half as empty as my head. 
You see I can’t even think without the rum ; 
that song, you learned me under the sea, 
takes a pretty mind, has to be sung straight to 
fool you. Did you know this ? Did you 
know you would get me when the rum run 
out ? Oh, you’re sharp ! ” 

If Bowl expected his visitors to be flat- 
tered, he was disappointed, the islanders’ 
jumbled intellects gaping at his surprising 
speech. 

“I thought there might be some more, that 
some lunatic islander might have had sense 
enough to stow away a jug somewhere ; but 
they must have been wholly mad, for I have 
ransacked every house, and all are dry as I am 
and as empty. They ’re my houses, you 
know,” he chuckled; “I’ve got the deeds, 
125 


Doomsday 

behind the bung of some keg in the fish- 
house, yonder; I can’t tell which.” 

One of the fishermen looked significantly at 
another. 

“ Something funny about these islanders,” 
Bowl continued dubiously. “ Do you know 
what has become of them ? Have you got 
them, or did they fly away like so many pin- 
feathered birds, as they expected ? There ’s 
not a hag in a corner, or a young one creeping 
across a floor. Margaret ’s gone ! ” 

More of the islanders began to comprehend, 
and shook their heads, touching them know- 
ingly ; but Bowl ignored them, took no notice 
when half a dozen slunk off towards the 
fish-house. 

“ I went up where we once lived to see. 
The door was open, or I mightn’t have 
known. The sun, you ghosts can’t bear, 
lay like a bar of yellow gold upon the floor. 
Margaret’s nets were in it, all a-glitter, and I 
saw her chair, through the misty light, its 
arms worn shiny where hers had rested. Her 
apron hung upon one post, but she was gone. 
126 


Doomsday 

I was afraid to call, and came away ; but I 
know Margaret is not there. Everybody’s 
gone, and you have come for me.” 

Sound of hammering, in the fish-house, 
interrupted the remaining islanders’ attention, 
and all of them stole off in its direction. 

“ You’ve come for me,” Bowl repeated, 
without noticing he was alone, his imagination 
still peopling the beach, but there’s another 
verse to my ditty. I said I couldn’t think, a 
little while ago, and I can’t think of what 
you learned me, but there ’s another verse, 
some one has been singing in my ears all day. 
It ’s a sweet tune, sweet as your faces. I ’ll 
give it to you before we go ; ” and standing 
up he stretched his neck as if to sing, but 
whipped out a knife instead, and slit his 
throat from ear to ear, leaning forward, when 
it was done, curiously like a singer waiting for 
applause, then fell suddenly in a blot upon the 
beach, his blood creeping through the ashes, 
clotting and turning them dull red. 

In the fish-house, the islanders scrambled, 
with angry cries, among the scattered staves 
12 7 


Doomsday 

and broken glass, half lit by a single swaying 
lantern. Soon as any’s search was gratified, 
he broke away, dragging a stunned child after 
him, or a frightened wife. One by one the 
wreckwood cabins burst into candlelight, some 
ominously silent in the ravenous feeding of 
the inmates, others clamorous with blows and 
childish wails. 

The sprawling thing, upon the beach, lay 
where it had fallen, one eye buried in the 
ashes of the prophet’s fires, the other staring 
unwinkingly into the blinding starlight that 
hid the red dory. 


APRIL 


129 






















































































































































































- r 





























































































































































































































































APRIL 


r r 

F 

I 

I AM not writing from the dead, though 
many, beside the woman who inspires me, 
must look up through the waters in which the 
Petrel is moored ; and a step will take me to 
any of them. You who read this may think 
me distraught ; but should I get up from this 
table, which I have brought from the cabin, 
and turn upon my heels, as the doctors spin 
those whom they suspect of being sick of mind, 
the Petrel's deck would still appear as level to 
me as it really is in this quiet harbor. Indeed, 
though I hasten my writing that I may go to 
the dead, I wait long enough to tell this story, 
solely that they who shall discover whither 
and how I have gone, may not think me 
without reason. 

I 3 I 


April 

As none here knows my family or place, 
I need say nothing of them. All I am going 
to tell happened upon the Petrel , or upon this 
island, in the shadow of which the Petrel has 
been moored so long. Smiles, — my crooked 
mate and crew, my cook and body-servant, — 
calls me Captain, and I will pass as such, or as 
the owner of the Petrel, I am not more to 
any islander, nor shall I ever be to any who 
may hear of me, or come upon the Petrel in 
this harbor. 

Others have sailed out of that world, no 
longer mine, into the sun, and not returned. 
No doubt 1 am already a dream to those who 
wished me well, vaguest, perhaps, to her 
who was to come with me, had not the winds 
of fate blown her upon another course. I 
would be a dream to them, did sail into the 
sun, and the faces of my former friends are 
dim to me as, I am sure, mine is now to 
them. 

You must not think I fled from the world, 
or that I have aught against it. These coasts 
were familiar to me from other summer voyages, 
132 


April 

though I never came so far before. Last year 
was last of five years at Exeter and Cambridge, 
and five more of the world. If the woman 
I was to marry did not come with me, as she 
had promised, her kiss was warm upon my 
lips: No, I was never happier than when I 
cleared for this cruise, set, from the start, for 
Acadie, as these islands and all from Isle au 
Haute to Cape Breton was once called. 

My captain had sailed the Petrel from the 
day she was built. Besides him, she carried a 
red-headed Swede for mate, and two tarry men 
from Gloucester. My own man was cook, 
and no Frenchman was ever cunninger. 

I had brought one book, — an old Theoc- 
ritus, black-lettered and illuminated, read and 
reread, but always to be read again. There 
were wine and stores aboard for myself and 
for that light-hearted woman who was to come 
with me and did not, unwittingly preparing 
me for unguessed hospitality. 


133 


April 


II 

S AILOR never had fairer voyage than ours. 

Days of the sun, I called them, and 
nights of the moon, for the moon turned 
her face to us all the way. We could 
measure the long coast by every light upon it, 
or in daytime by great hills which trembled 
in the distant mists, or came down to us gray 
and gaunt and heroic. 

Bemus — the name will tell nothing, for 
many captains besides mine have borne it — 
did not shift sail, or alter our course, through 
the June winds and June weather. 

I had no regrets, was not alone. Theocritus 
drove his sheep before me, piping to them, or 
to his sweet women ; and all the fair earth 
blossomed under his feet. 

Believe me, there are islands in these seas, 
so still beneath the sun you would think them 
asleep. Dwarf oaks grow to the water edge, 
and birches upon every highland. All the 
inlets are doors to slender intervales, or to 
134 


April 

pasture lands which lift men into that delightful 
country between sleep and waking, where one 
smells the wind blown up sea and slope and 
hears the following cry of barefooted plough- 
boy as he leads his panting oxen and the bent 
ploughman along the hills. Or you can lie 
upon a slanted deck, as I, under white canvas 
rustling like wings, and sail across lit waters, 
along golden coasts that you will guess are lands 
of the gods, and know why the Greeks were 
poets. At night, a mist or shadow falls upon 
the earth ; but over it, as if to surpass the 
day, march millions of flaming archangels. 
Even the storms which blow along the coast 
are gracious, dignifying its navigators with the 
awful splendor of a call to God. 

We stopped at Isle au Haute for fresh 
water, and to see old friends among the 
primitive people. Afterwards, we drifted 
from one island to another — for the wind fell 
away in their harbors and reaches — some- 
times going ashore to climb the highlands, a 
brown brook making road, if it did not sing 
us to sleep on the way ; sometimes drifting 

T 35 


April 

entirely round an island without touching, ignor- 
ing the cries of red-shirted men, and the softer 
voices of women, — slight none ever resented. 

They rowed out to us every evening, — 
boat-loads of boys gay with liquor, laughing at 
us, perhaps, because we stopped overnight in 
their coves and inlets. Lovers came and sang 
to us or to each other, or drifted round us in 
whispering silence. We laughed at all of 
them, or, if they came near enough, told 
them tales of the world, which they answered 
with lore of the islands. And there was 
sturdier narrative, — grizzly old natives tying 
up to the stern of the Petrel , and telling brave 
tales of great fightings, of which no man ever 
read, but good in the ears, as all is that never 
happened. Young fishermen explained their 
fine art ; and girls came out and smiled with 
their eyes, though they said nothing, having 
said all to others, I suppose. I had seen and 
heard all this before. Even the boastings of 
the grizzly old natives were old. But we do 
not throw away Theocritus after one reading ; 
he will be new another morning. So it 
136 


April 

was with the sights, and arts, and tales, of the 
islands, fresh in every repetition, as violets in 
the daily bath of the dews. 

But one day we drifted into a strange har- 
bor, farther than I had ever been. I had 
heard of it, and seen old graybeards shake their 
heads at its name. Young men always laughed 
when they talked of its light-hearted people, 
and told us stories of them that nobody would 
put into a book. We laughed with them as 
all the world would, but I always believed 
they were romancing. 

Bemus had visited the island before, and 
steered without chart. One side of the har- 
bor rose almost into a mountain ; indeed, 
Bemus said the islanders called it Mont Joie ; 
and I looked at it twice, as old women say, 
musing upon those sweet-lipped children of the 
fleur de lys whom the Anglo-Saxons have 
crushed or huddled into corners, yet who re- 
main in a thousand place-names, all chosen with 
the sure instinct that sponsored this mountain. 
The black granite cropped everywhere upon 
its steep sides, but dwarf oaks clung to it and 
137 


April 

feathery birches ; and we could see diminu- 
tive terraces, or steps, where the rock was 
covered with grass ; and here and there I 
caught the flame of a lily. The other side of 
the harbor was lower, almost level, and, lying 
west of the mountain, was covered with 
small farms and gay little houses, looking, 
from the deck of the Petrel , as if children had 
fallen to housekeeping. 

I was talking to Bemus, near the wheel, as 
we entered the harbor, listening to his half- 
contemptuous description of the people, with 
the allowance which I always made for his 
prejudice. We saw no inhabitants, which I 
thought curious, for usually the Petrel at- 
tracted attention ; but the harbor suddenly 
widened, revealing a strip of white beach upon 
which all the islanders seemed gathered, to see 
a race between two dories just launched. 
Bemus must have been of this opinion, for I 
could hear him curse their folly. I soon saw 
we were wrong, told so by the cries of the 
crowd, which were shriller and savager than 
such a contest would excite ; and plainer, 

138 


April 

by something else which I had not at first 
noticed. Bemus saw the thing first, and it 
was his quickened oaths that showed it to me, 
his eyes, to which I had been called by his 
exclamations, carrying mine to a significant 
speck on the water between us and the dories. 
It was a man’s head. We could see his face 
when the waves fell from it, and we soon saw 
that his exertions were as great as those of the 
rowers. 

Bemus muttered of queer sport ; but I knew 
the savage cries had another meaning. Even 
Bemus soon noticed the swimmer’s white ter- 
ror, and, as startled as I was, began damning 
the man-hunters. 

It was a man-hunt ; but the man was brave 
quarry, and we soon saw that his pursuers 
had not all the advantage. They had boats, 
and there were many of them, too many, I 
thought, for their own advantage. At any 
rate, the awful sport was not so unequal as 
first appeared. The man had a good start, 
and he was a powerful swimmer. 

In his astonishment, Bemus had dropped the 

T 39 


April 

Petrel's wheel, and she swung about, drifting 
without danger in the deep water. All of us 
hung over the rail, scarcely breathing. 

Rowers and swimmer were doing their ut- 
most, — the swimmer leaping in the water, the 
rowers bending forward and backward, level- 
ling their bodies every time they caught the 
water and recovered. Their oars screeched 
in the rowlocks. The split water hissed 
under the sharp prows. I could hear the 
roar of their breath. 

The shouting upon shore had stopped, those 
there struck as dumb as ourselves by the ter- 
rible struggle, or sick at the thought of what, 
in spite of the swimmer’s advantage and ter- 
rible effort, soon seemed the inevitable end. 
For notwithstanding their handicap, the dories 
were gaining, and it was yet far cry to the 
other side of the harbor, toward which the 
swimmer was headed, and where he probably 
hoped to hide himself in the rocks. We after- 
ward found it was a good hiding-place ; but it 
was too far for the swimmer to make, though 
he never weakened. 


140 


April 

I did not know what the wretch had done, 
but all my sympathy was with him. He was 
one, and fought the sea as well as his pur- 
suers ; and I stared at his stricken face, fas- 
cinated, and praying under my breath for his 
escape. 

He deserved to escape. He did not once 
look over his shoulders, though the terrible cry 
of the chase must have sung in his ears plainer 
than in ours. All his strength went into his 
arms’ and legs’ rhythmic sweep, and gathering 
all he could of the water in every embrace, as 
if he realized that it was his greatest enemy, 
he crushed it beneath him, or thrust it as far 
behind him as possible. But in spite of his 
efforts, the dories were gaining. Their oar- 
strokes were as regular as the strokes of his 
arms, and grasped more of the water. 

Soon they were only a score of boat-lengths 
behind, and the swimmer was many more 
from the mountain. The score slowly short- 
ened into a dozen, and the dozen into less 
than half. 

He was close to us now, though he seemed 
141 


April 

unconscious of the Petrel , his eyes never drop- 
ping from the hill beyond us. I could see his 
eyes, so near was he, and the great veins in 
his face ; and the eyes of his hunters were 
almost as plain. 

Those who were not rowing leaned across 
the rails of the dories, two of them over the 
prows, looking awful head-pieces, their arms 
stretched out like the swimmer’s, to seize him 
when overtaken. 

It was only a question of strokes now, and 
the dorymen knew it, their faces breaking into 
ferocious smiles ; and the swimmer also knew 
it, for I saw more despair in his eyes. Closer 
and closer the boats crept — they were now 
under our stern — closer, until they were so 
near he almost kicked them with his heels, so 
close the bent men above must have touched 
him. 

Whether their touch gave him additional 
strength and a new idea, I do not know ; but, 
just as the dorymen were upon him, yelling 
with triumph, he shot to one side, and swim- 
ming backward a stroke or two, put the Petrel 
142 


between himself and his enemies, their momen- 
tum carrying them entirely beyond us. 

The Petrel lies low in the water, and he 
scrambled over her side and fell at our feet, 
begging us to save him. 

Perhaps I ought to have hesitated, or even 
refused. I say this now, knowing what fol- 
lowed ; though I do not say it, even now, 
with much conviction. This particular man 
less would have made no difference ; another 
would have taken his place and played out 
the tragedy, here begun. The individual is no 
loss in the tragic art, nor any loss, I suspect, 
to a woman ; would not have been, I am sure, 
to the woman this man so strangely brought 
me and took from me. But I, without know- 
ing what I did — who does know what he 
does ? — told Bemus to push him into the 
cabin and lock it, not minding that worthy’s 
muttered advice to keep out of the islanders’ 
business. I could not keep out of the busi- 
ness, could not let them murder him on the 
Petrel . 

When the dorymen recovered and saw 

M3 



April 


what had happened, they were furious. They 
pulled alongside the Petrel , so excitedly I 
could not help laughing ; and two of them — 
the two who almost had their hands on the 
swimmer — leaped over the rail, and others 
started to do so, evidently meaning to drag 
the wretch from our protection. I bored the 
ear of one of the fellows with my pistol, hap- 
pening to have one upon deck where I had 
been practising upon the wild duck that morn- 
ing ; and he retreated, jumping back into the 
dory so quickly that he fell sprawling. I had 
practised the shot upon a rude sketch of a 
man’s head, and could do it every time on 
the paper, but was almost as much surprised as 
the fellow with the stung ear, at its success in 
actual combat. 

Bemus had only his bare fists ; but he made 
good use of them, catching the other boarder 
under the ribs, lifting him clear of the rail and 
the dories, and landing him flat on his back 
in the water, where he kicked like a turtle. 
My red-headed Swede was dancing on the 
deck between us, shouting in outlandish Eng- 


144 




April 

lish, and viciously sparring the air, daring the 
now hesitating dorymen to come on. Some 
old viking’s spirit must have been exercising 
in him. Anyhow, the dorymen had enough, 
and began to palaver. 

The swimmer had murdered a man, — 
their captain, they told us. 

“He is red on the beach, now,” one of 
them said, pointing backward. 

This was serious ; but I was not going to 
abandon the man to the short shrift they 
would give him, and said so. 

They argued the point, told me the man 
deserved the worst they could give him. 

I said it might be, but I knew nothing 
about it, and that there was a law ; and 
finally growing impatient, said I only had 
their word that there had been any murder. 

I could see by going ashore, they answered, 
which was reasonable, and they offered to 
take me, saying they would go with me to 
the authorities, and I consented. 

I was not afraid of the islanders ; and it 
would give the man justice ; so, without a 
10 145 


April 

word to the miserable creature whom I had 
scarcely seen, except in the water, I dropped 
into one of the dories, after giving Bemus my 
pistol, and telling him not to let any man upon 
the Petrel . He must stand at the companion- 
way, I told him, and let no one up or down 
until I returned. 

Little was said on the way in. The 
islanders were humiliated, I suppose ; and I 
cursed the disagreeable adventure ; but there 
had been murder! Four of the islanders lifted 
the dead man, as we landed, and carried him 
up the beach before us. The knife which 
had done the thing lay on the sand, still wet, 
I saw, as I went by it shivering. None of 
the crowd had touched it, but one of the 
dorymen picked it up, and wiped it on his 
trousers. 

There was nothing left, except to see 
the authorities, as I reminded the dorymen ; 
and they started with me to find him, for 
all the authority on the island was under one 
hat. 

I noticed that my companions dropped off, 
146 


April 

one by one, in a curious way, but there were 
enough left to guide me, and I thought little of 
it ; though when we reached the justice’s door, 
all forsook me except one, — my crooked 
Smiles, whom they had picked up somewhere 
on the road, and whom I saw for the first 
time as he knocked. I was as well satisfied 
without the dorymen, however, knowing 
that Bemus could keep our prisoner against 
every man on the island, if they planned any 
treachery. But they were really afraid of the 
man I was going to meet, as I suspected. 


Ill 

S USPECTING what I did, I was sur- 
prised when, at some one’s bidding, I 
entered, leaving Smiles outside — he would go 
no farther — and saw only a little old man sit- 
ting in a huge chair and smoking a pipe as many 
sizes too big for him. I almost laughed in 
his face, and looked around for somebody 
more impressive. But I soon saw we were 

*47 


April 

alone ; and he bade me be seated, with such 
rare courtesy that I was quickly enough im- 
pressed with him. 

He made no inquiry about my business, in- 
stead, began talking of the weather with such 
charm that I, a connoisseur of that old-fashioned 
but delightful subject, especially delightful, as 
I have said, among the islands, would have 
joined in his mild-mannered rhapsody, had 
not the uglier matter, upon which I had come, 
worried me. Finally, unable to contain my- 
self longer, I broke in with the murder, asking 
him if there had not been one on the island ; 
for I was uncertain whether he knew anything 
of it. 

(( Peste ! ” he answered, much to my as- 
tonishment, and with an indescribable gesture. 
“ There is always murder here in these 
days ! * * 

I almost jumped out of my seat ; but he 
only flourished his white hands — they were 
white as a woman’s — in what seemed mild 
impatience. It surpassed anything I had ever 
seen or heard. 


148 


April 

"Now that April is a woman/’ he con- 
tinued, " the young men only kill each other.” 

Here was a riddle ; but I waited for him 
to solve it, all the while wondering why the 
bloodthirsty islanders had been willing this 
man should have his way with my prisoner. 
But I did not know him as well then as 
afterward. 

He was very deliberate about making him- 
self plain, saying no more, indeed, until he had 
filled his pipe with tobacco which he crowded 
into the huge bowl, leaf upon leaf, with ut- 
most exactness, smiling over it and at me when 
the coal, he deftly picked up from the fireplace 
and laid upon it, was eclipsed in the cloud of 
the tobacco’s blue smoke. I was interested, 
in spite of myself ; and when he settled back in 
his huge chair, and began to talk in the garru- 
lous way of a born story-teller, I made myself 
easy, though half humorously protesting against 
such justice. 

But I could enjoy it if he could. The 
man I had rescued was safe on the Petrel . 
Besides, the savage islanders had wofully 

149 


April 

broken in on my mood ; and it was no more 
than right that this fine-humored old fellow 
should restore it, as he seemed willing to do. 
It was a task for which I soon found him per- 
fectly competent. 

I like garrulous old men. They are like old 
wine. Their stories have none of the loud 
boastfulness or rude, passion of youth, but are 
well seasoned, and fall into the soul with the 
grace of a Greek poem, or folk-lore, retold 
until every word is in its place and there is 
not one too many. 

His people had always been good-humored, 
he said, as children of the light-hearted men 
of Old France should be ; or any one, indeed, 
with a drop of that blood in his veins, even 
though mixed with much more of solemn 
English, or dark Indian. I nodded ; and 
he, seeing my liking, told of Saint-Castine, 
and Vaudreuil, and the Ibervilles, the Jesuits 
and Ursulines, leaning forward in his great 
chair, with lit face and brave gestures, as he 
talked, sighing occasionally, but oftener laugh- 
ing and exulting. Not one of his stories 

150 


April 

showed the trail of the printer. They were 
such tales as mothers tell children, or old 
crones mumble in corners, or battered old sol- 
diers and settlers spend their broken days tell- 
ing, — such things as every one hears in his 
childhood, human, delightful, odorous of the 
heart of the people. There was not a book in 
the room, or in the house, I found afterward ; 
and I am certain he had never been off the 
island. He had simply kept his child’s ears 
for such matters, listening to all the old wives 
and wanderers, and so long and earnestly that 
he had found their manner as well as their 
matter. 

I forgot the murder and the Petrel , and sank 
back into the chair, almost as big as his own, 
into which he had bowed me, drowsy and easy, 
but marching in spirit to the tune of his fancy. 

His father had ruled in his place — another 
like himself, I guessed — and from him, 
doubtless, he inherited as much wit as prop- 
erty, and, probably, most of the legends. A 
wise old man, his son said he was, ruling his 
people with humor and discretion, to which I 

I 5 I 


April 

assented when he said the old man never 
interfered with his people. When appealed 
to, he made quick decisions and invariably- 
exacted huge fines — huge for them — half of 
which he kept for his trouble. The justice 
told me he had always endeavored to follow 
his father’s example, winking solemnly- at the 
sound of my laughter. 

I now understood the islanders’ terror. 

They had lived in peace, he said, until one 
of their girls had become a mother before she 
was wife. Such things had happened here 
before with very few tears, saving those of 
such mothers-of-sorrow ; but this time it was 
different. This maid-mother had been the 
fairest girl of the island, and her father and 
mother the proudest of all its habitants, as 
they might be ; for their name, in spite of its 
rude twist in the mouths of the English, and 
the alien blood which may have flowed into 
it, was, upon the lips of the old justice, 
one of the fairest of the fair names of Old 
France. 

Every one knew the child’s father, though, 

T 5 2 


April 

curiously enough, none knew his name, not 
even the young mother, or, if she did, she 
never revealed it. He had come to the island 
in a coaster which only touched to put him 
off, whether of his own will, or the captain’s, 
nobody guessed. All he brought with him 
was an old violin, but he could not have been 
better outfitted among the gay islanders. 
They remembered that he had never smiled, 
and that he never showed slightest interest in 
their work or play, looking over their heads 
with sorrowful eyes while they danced to his 
music. All he cared for was the violin and 
the girl, only putting the violin down to eat, 
and then close to him upon the table, or to 
play more awful or sweeter music upon the 
tense strings of the girl’s life. 

No one knew where, or how, he first met 
her ; but when seen together their eyes and 
speech looked and sounded as if they had 
always known each other. She had always 
wandered at her will over the island, as 
other maids ; and as he immediately fell into 
the same way, as if an old habit, they might 
153 


April 

have met anywhere in the brown roads or the 
fields ; though no one knew the exact place, 
or an item of the sweet or sad history, save 
the two most concerned. Her father and 
mother never knew anything of the love-mak- 
ing ; and those who knew most were other 
lovers like themselves. So the tragedy — for 
such things are always tragic — was played to 
unconscious auditors until the denouement. 
She had to follow the traditional reading of 
the great lines ; they cannot be made truer or 
more tragic than they were by the first sinning 
woman who created the part ; but he read his 
lines in his own way, leaping from the cliffs 
of Mont Joie when the song she sung under 
his bowing must have been sweetest. 

The islanders had heard him playing upon 
Mont Joie that day and went out to see, rowing 
with feverish haste to the music’s awful laughter. 
They always said it was awful, the justice de- 
clared ; and it may have been, if inspired by 
what the lover contemplated, or if only the 
last protest of his exile, or last note of his sor- 
row. We agreed, the justice and I, that his 
*54 


April 

great leap into their midst, or into the wide 
arms of the waters, would have made any 
tune awful in their ears. Whatever his story, 
it was ended, or as much of it ended as his 
lips could have told. There was more in the 
girl, — in her ears, it may be ; in her heart, 
certainly. 

The maid fainted when she heard of her 
lover’s curious playing and its end ; for his 
leap into the sea was utter end, neither man 
nor violin floating, as if they had gone back 
that way to the land from which he was ex- 
iled ; as all may, who voyage so in the 
waters, for aught we know to the contrary. 
None, except a few fellow-lovers, guessed at 
the time why she fainted, unless it was awe 
over the singular incident, which may still be 
true with the truth which was revealed after- 
ward. Who can guess the awe that fell upon 
her at that tragic passing of love ? Who, 
except those who have seen as much ? and 
they never speak. 

She said nothing, even when her hard 
father and mother cast her off, left her home 

I 55 


April 

with only the inheritance from her lover, — 
the sweetest, most terrible gift in the world, 
even when men have a right to make it. 
“ What tales she must have poured into her 
child’s ears!” the old justice exclaimed. 
** What despair, and what passion ! What 
sorrow for ears so unresponsive, yet hearing all 
a mother could tell, or a father ! It must have 
listened to both, drinking every thought of 
their hearts, every emotion.’ ’ With such child, 
whose face she was never to see, though she 
knew it as none else ever would, the lost 
woman went to my crooked old Smiles, and 
his equally crooked crone of a wife, — both of 
them old servants of her father’s, — and waited 
for what came, in a woman’ s simple, sublime 
way. She climbed sometimes to the rock 
where her lover had played his brave tune. 
The old justice told me he had seen her there. 
She was always near it, for old Smiles’s 
cabin was underneath, on the sea side of the 
mountain. 

Smiles was afraid that she would follow her 
lover ; but she shook her head at his fears. 


April 

guessing them through his gibberish, and he, 
wiser than another would have been, let her 
alone. He and his grotesque old wife waited 
upon her, both of them waiting with her, as 
well as upon her ; and lifting as much as any 
besides herself could, of the burden her own 
father and mother refused. She died in her 
travail, realizing, it may be — it was the old 
justice who said this — that so sweet a tragedy 
must not drag, or have unnatural length. And 
the two crooked ones met the love child and 
gave it pitiful welcome. 

Old Smiles took the child to its grandfather 
and grandmother ; but they would hear noth- 
ing and receive nothing, and forbade him to 
call her by their name. Knowing nothing 
else to do, he carried her to the old justice, 
where the islanders took all things too great 
for them. He, believing that she would die, 
baptized her, naming her April, after the 
month which with the dead woman had 
mothered her, and which must have in some 
mysterious way added its gifts to those of 
natural father and mother ; for the child 
157 


April 

Jived and was fair, — how fair, I found after- 
ward. 

After the christening. Smiles went back to 
his cabin on the other side of Mont Joie , 
carrying April with him ; and the story, 
which had been in every one’s lips and ears, 
slowly died for want of excitement. It 
quickened when her proud grandfather and 
grandmother died one after the other, and she, 
as was lawful, received all they left, — a 
surprisingly large amount to the islanders, and 
of which the justice had made himself guar- 
dian. But the dead are soon buried and soon 
lost in men’s minds; and the girl was also 
again forgotten, until she crossed the harbor 
one day, alone, and it seemed in spite of her 
crooked old foster-parents’ protests. 

April’s coming set all the hitherto good- 
natured islanders by the ears. Those who 
saw her face straightway forgot every other ; 
and men killed each other without compunction, 
as I had seen, because in each other’s sight. 
The captain, whom the islanders had undoubt- 
edly hidden before this in some secret grave, 

! 5 8 


April 

and my prisoner were, if I was to believe the 
old justice, only two of many. 

I looked serious, and asked if such things 
should not be examined. 

The old justice smiled at me over his pipe, 
the contents of which he had burned like a 
sacrifice to the story, leaving only a pinch of 
gray ashes in the great bowl, and inquired the 
use of such a proceeding, saying the dead 
were all dead, of which there could be no 
doubt, and that some one of April’s admirers 
always executed the guilty, if only to bring 
the same punishment upon himself. This 
might be certain justice, but I was less sure of 
the quality. He wanted to know why he 
should interfere when they were so willing to 
save him any trouble, said the province had 
plenty to do, elsewhere, with those who were 
less zealous, and mentioned the saving, even 
quoted something he had heard about over- 
crowded prisons. 

It was refreshing, and possibly fairest of 
justice, but entirely novel to me. I know 
the old man better now ; and perhaps I am 
*59 


April 

wiser. I am sure I am simpler, and look at 
things very much as he does ; but I must have 
frowned then, for he shifted in his chair un- 
easily, and finally asked me what I was going 
to do with my prisoner — still more astonishing, 
for that was exactly what I had come to ask 
him, and I told him as much. 

He was more serious now than myself ; for 
he forgot his empty pipe, and scowled as if 
striving to solve something unusual, which 
was the case if his administration of justice had 
been what he described, as I now know it 
was. Finally, he got up and went to the 
door, scaring old Smiles into the road, prob- 
ably what he intended ; for, after looking out 
of every window, opening every other door to 
the room, and peering out as if to be sure no 
one was listening — a proceeding I watched 
with increasing amusement — he came back 
and sat down, pulling his chair close to me as 
he did so, and whispered that I might take the 
man to the governor. 

I laughed in his face, but sobered immedi- 
ately, when I saw how I hurt him, and ex- 
160 


April 

plained who were the proper parties to receive 
the murderer, — an explanation which I am 
bound to say he received with perfect indiffer- 
ence, motioning impatiently for me to cease 
talking, and bidding me take the man anywhere 
I wished. 

Of course I was angry at such failure to 
understand me. I had not come to the island 
to be a vile deputy, and told him as much, 
leaping out of my chair, and pounding the 
table, all of which only seemed to restore his 
good humor. He begged my pardon, and 
asked me to do the thing to help him, saying 
he could not trust the man to an islander, 
which was certainly true, and which, with 
his fine courtesy, put another face upon the 
matter. Still, I was not persuaded. I pro- 
tested that the thing would be treachery, after 
rescuing the swimmer. But the shrewd 
old man could split hairs as finely as I, and 
asked me if I had given the man protection 
that he might escape, or that he might have 
justice. Then I temporized, told him to 
deliver the prisoner himself, and offered 
ii 161 


April 

the Petrel for the service, saying I would 
wait upon the island until his return, and 
laughingly hinting that such opportunity to 
see April would not be cross-grained with 
my liking. 

He looked sober when I mentioned April, 
but said nothing against such desire of mine, 
or for it, only replying that such a voyage 
was impossible for him. He had never been 
away from the island, which was no argument ; 
and his people would lose the little self-control 
they had if he went away, which was prob- 
ably true. I must go ; and such was the in- 
fluence of the good-humored old man, or so 
persuasive was he, that, in spite of my un- 
willingness, I finally consented, comforting my- 
self with the thought that it was only a day’s 
trip. Nasty as the thing was, it would 
soon be over ; and rid of the murderer, the 
island, to which I could return, would quickly 
make me forget him. After all, I was only 
doing what was right by the murderer, and at 
the same time doing my new friend, more 
charming than any I had ever found on the 
162 


April 

islands, a kindness. I would come back, and 
listen to more of his talk without such grotesque 
or grim interruption ; would have him on 
the Petrely and fill him with wine, which I 
guessed he would like, until he sung like 
Apollo. Alas ! I did come back, though not 
for sake of his stories. 

When I consented, he opened the door and 
called Smiles, bringing him in from the road- 
side by an astonishing enticement, — nothing 
less than an offer to release some mortgage 
which he seemed to hold on the wry fellow’s 
cabin. He told me, when he saw my surprise, 
that the service he asked, only that the fellow 
should row me out to the Petrel , was all he 
would ever get, but that he would probably 
have a new mortgage on the morrow. With 
these petty loans, each, I afterward found, 
made with the legal detail and pomp of vaster 
transactions — for he was legal enough on 
some sides if so lax upon others — and with 
the double fines, he owned every man on the 
island. The only value of the bonds to him, 
however, was the ticklish touch they seemed 
163 


April 

to give to his humor ; and they troubled the 
islanders as little, except when they were in 
his presence. 

The relinquishment of the mortgage, for 
after fumbling through the cupboard and in the 
drawer of his table with a great deal of soft 
swearing, the queer old justice fished out the 
papers and handed them over, was genuine 
relief to old Smiles ; and he hopped at my 
side on the way to the beach as gayly as if he 
had inherited a fortune, or, what was perhaps 
more to the purpose, would not be indebted to 
the justice again. 

The justice had bowed me out of his door 
with words that fell around me like incense ; 
and when I looked back from the dory, which 
Smiles found for the passage, he still stood 
under the arch, waving his hands in stately 
farewells, his pipe, which he had filled in 
the mean time, still smoking like something 
sacrificial. 

I was in just as good humor, had forgot my 
disagreeable errand, and smiled to myself, 
meditating upon the old and singular stories I 
164 


April 


had heard, and wondering if I should ever see 
the girl, April, and whether she were fair as 
her significant name. 


IV 


HE first thing I saw, when I leaped 



JL over the side of the Petrel , was Bemus, 
staring at me from the companionway, white- 
faced and trembling. He seemed to collapse 
when I came ; and my pistol fell from his 
hand, exploding as it struck the deck, the 
bullet whistling between my legs and over the 
water. 

I was afraid to ask what was the matter, 
guessed, in spite of my assurance to the con- 
trary, that the islanders had been there, and 
that he had been wounded ; and I cursed my 
folly and the old justice’s long stories, think- 
ing all of these things before I could speak. 
I had not recovered when I heard some one 
moving behind me, and knowing in some 
occult way that here was the explanation, I 


i6 5 


April 

turned round and saw a girl standing in the 
shadow of the great mainsail. 

Only one woman would seek my prisoner, 
I knew ; and only one gotten among lilies, or 
upon a bank of blue violets, could have been 
as fair, and April’s name rushed to my lips. 

She bent her head as I spoke, but said noth- 
ing for a moment, though I saw no sign of 
surprise or confusion. She looked as steadily 
upon me as I did upon her. 

She was taller than most women, and swayed 
in the slight roll of the Petrel like a flower in 
the wind. Her face may have been round, or 
an oval, but half of it was veiled by her hair, 
which fell or floated over her ears and shoul- 
ders in yellow masses, unconfined except in a 
single gold fillet low on her temples. Her 
lips were slightly parted as if smiling ; and her 
thin nostrils were dilated. There was fire, 
too, under the white skin of her cheek ; but 
her eyes — whether purple, or blue, or darker, 
I never knew, so did they change in the light 
of her humors — were deep and mysterious, 
April eyes, Theocritus would have sung ; and 
166 


April 

her name and inheritance were most evident 
there. All the month’s moods were in them, 
and, underneath the moods, that deeper un- 
fathomableness of the month and the woman, 
out of which shone every sort of weather, or 
where all the manifold joys and sorrows which 
had made her played unseen and unknown, 
except as their laughter or passion rose to the 
surface. I saw far into them that first time, 
so far my vision was never quite my own 
again, and, afterward, saw deeper, looking full 
into them with her lips upon mine ; but I 
was never wiser, only lost myself more com- 
pletely. 

When she asked me to give up my prisoner, 
I refused, not because I had given my word to 
the justice, or because I had any scruples, but 
because he had looked into her eyes and might 
look again. I wished he had drowned, wished 
the dorymen had beaten his head into a jelly, 
groped on the deck for the pistol Bemus had 
dropped, that I might go down and destroy 
him. 

I thought April laughed at me ; but when 
167 


April 

I looked up her hands were clasped in entreaty, 
a gesture I answered by gripping mine as if 
upon the murderer’s throat, looking all the 
time into her eyes, under the heavy lids and 
long lashes, seeking some recognition of my 
sudden love, if no more than pity of it. She 
smiled, but it was like light upon water, con- 
cealing her feelings, or increasing her eyes’ 
mystery. When I think of it, men are amus- 
ing ; and a woman might smile on us, as she 
did upon me, in mere mirth. 

I did not give up my prisoner to her, would 
not let him out of the cabin while she was 
upon the Petrel ; but I promised not to hurt 
him, and not to give him into the hands of his 
enemies, meaning as she did any one who 
would punish him. 

She thanked me, and let me help her over 
the side of the Petrel into the skiff in which 
she had come, but forbade my going farther, 
and rowed off, all the crew looking. When she 
was gone none spoke of her ; even the red- 
headed Swede, who was generally singing, 
swore gloomily under his breath. April is 
1 68 


April 

one man’s month as much as another’s, though 
I could not see as straight then, and fancy my 
words are straighter now than my sight. I 
did not appreciate Bemus’s resistance, which 
may have been right enough, his refusal of 
April’s request rising out of the same feeling 
which in me would have destroyed our pris- 
oner ; at any rate, I did not thank him. 

When April was gone, I unfastened the com- 
panion and descended into the cabin, not to 
see the miserable captive I found there, for I 
had no curiosity, looking over him at the 
maid’s fair image ; but he was possibly look- 
ing as far above me, so there was no incivility. 
He listened to all I said, without comment or 
question, and showed no pleasure or displeas- 
ure over my idea of taking him to Saint John’s. 

It was a fool’s disposition of him ; but I 
would not leave the island longer than such a 
trip required ; and, if April consented to the 
plan that had sprung within me full grown as 
my love and as plain. Saint John’s would be as 
good a place as anywhere in the world to dis- 
pose of him. The few clothes he had on were 
169 


April 

still drenched ; but I offered him none of mine, 
so much did I hate him. I laughed at his 
shivering, and, if I thought of it at all, hoped 
he would die. 

Going back upon deck, I told Bemus to get 
under way, and where I was bound, and what 
for. He smiled at my words ; and I could 
not help thinking how much his face looked 
like those ferocious faces of the dorymen which 
had so startled me. But the look startled me 
no longer ; perhaps I had such a look on 
my own face. We put about in a hurry, 
setting the course straight for the Bruns- 
wick town, as soon as we were outside, ex- 
actly opposite what our course should have 
been had I kept my promise to the justice. I 
looked back over the rail, and smiled to think 
how soon I had come to his mind, being sure 
that if he noticed our course at all he would be 
as well pleased with it as another. 

April filled my mind, and I saw things in 
her and about her, out there on the ocean, 
which I had not noticed or thought of when 
she was on the deck of the Petrel . I remem- 

170 


April 

bered that the fillet, from which her hair had 
fallen like sunlight, was hammered out of red 
gold, every link or plate left with the rude 
grace of the hammer’s last blow, except that 
which was in the midst of her forehead, which 
was cunningly fashioned, its mystical whorls 
bursting into a rosy blossom of fires in the 
single great stone of which it was the setting. 
The fillet had been her sole ornament ; for 
her dress of blue stuff, probably inherited by 
her grandmother from Old France with the 
fillet, was entirely plain, unless the long silken 
rope of the same color, which had been wound 
under and over her breasts and revealed their 
roundness, and from which the dress fell in 
deep folds, was an ornament. 

I was not surprised at April’s gown, had al- 
ways wondered that none of the maids of the 
islands seemed aware of the grace and color of 
nature ; and think I had always expected to 
find some one like her who would know all, 
and whose fair body would shine through her 
garments as the hills out of their mists. That I 
knew April to be a far away daughter of courts, 
171 


April 

only increased the sweet glamour about 
her. 

The island fell away far astern, and night 
came up out of the sea ; but I still looked over 
the rail, lit, whether she knew it or not, by the 
maid. 

I guess now that the crew were also think- 
ing of her ; and the poor devil, shivering in 
the cabin, may have seen as much as we. Pos- 
sibly none of us saw the real woman. Some 
other man upon the vanished island may have 
held her to his eyes, though I doubt whether 
even such advantage would give real sight of her, 
having held her that way myself, and being still 
uncertain what I saw. Perhaps the woman we 
look back upon, the woman who looks out of 
our own hearts, is real as any we shall ever 
see. But no man is content with her : there- 
fore my story. 

We reached Saint John’s the next day, and 
I hurried the wretched islander ashore, half- 
clothed as I had received him, repeating my 
mistake. I should have given him my own 
clothes, all the money I had, anything, every- 

172 


April 

thing, but I did not ; for I wanted him to 
starve, grudged him what Bemus threw to 
him. I ought to have known that April 
would be life to him, and that, if he had 
nothing else, memory of her kisses would feed 
him. But I was a fool, mad as himself. 

What a relief it was to put about ! What 
a relief to have the wretch out of the cabin ! 
That he stood on the shore and gazed after 
us, as we flew down the harbor, interested 
me no more than it would to have known that 
a fly on the wharf looked in the same direc- 
tion. Who ever thinks what it is that attracts 
an insect’s attention? and who cares what 
they, who seem to be well out of the way, 
think about ; or what those, who have lost all 
except eyes, stare after ? We did not pity the 
wretch, anyhow, all of us growing merry in 
the new course, the Swede singing his out- 
landish songs louder than ever, and my two 
tarry Gloucester men joining in with chorus 
of their own. What matter ! It was the 
tune in their hearts, not that upon their lips, 
which they sung. I struck in with a strain 
173 


April 

or two of my own, and Bemus, who was 
graver than any of us, whistled them through 
when I stuck. 

Bemus had left a wife in the world, a faded 
rag of a woman who had come down to the 
Petrel before we sailed, with three or four 
young ones hanging about her, and scolded 
him shrilly for something, her sharp voice 
rising above the noise of the ferry-boat’s 
whistles, only stilled when I scowled upon 
her. I knew then that he was ashamed of 
her, and that he felt like a cur under her 
tongue ; and I never saw greater look of relief 
than came into his face when we dropped out 
of hearing that day, or such expansion in a man 
as the sea air and song of the rigging filled him. 

What April was to him I cannot tell. I 
had no thought of him at the time; or, if I 
thought of him, it was that he and the others 
were rejoicing with me, were merry because 
I was, not because they, also, had seen her. 
I forgot that April is a month in every one’s 
life, and that any one can look at a woman. 
Sitting upon the deck of the Petrel as she flew 
174 


April 

over the waves, like her namesake, I laughed 
and sung to myself as if I were the only one 
in the world who had seen the maid’s face. 

We made the island quicker than we had 
left it, even the Petrel and the winds leaping 
to my desire. Mont Joie hove in sight first, 
the far side of it, with old Smiles’s abandoned 
cabin, half up its side, hanging, like a wild 
bird’s nest, to the slant of a clearing between 
the scrub oaks and birches ; for that side 
was heavily wooded. We had gone by the 
lowlands ; but the wind blew us south of the 
mountain, returning, so that we saw nothing 
of the gay houses or harbor until we suddenly 
rounded Mont Joie and stood in under the 
frowning black granite, and the birches, and 
lilies. It was the same island, but children 
now played in the yards of the houses, and 
women leaned out of the windows, and a 
half dozen boats put off for us as we went in, 
their rowers answering each other with laughter 
and really racing for us, so fast that one of 
them was in the way of the anchor when 
Bemus dropped it overboard. 

175 


April 

Some of them, I suppose, had been among 
the man-hunting dory men, though I recog- 
nized none, their laughter masking them better 
than anything. There seemed little difference 
between them and the islanders who had en- 
tertained us everywhere, unless they were 
more voluble. A few wore bright caps on 
their heads, instead of the usual yellow sou’- 
westers ; and gold rings hung in almost every 
one’s ears, instead of occasionally, as else- 
where. 

All guessed or knew our errand to Saint 
John’s, I am sure ; but no one made any in- 
quiry, believing of course that what we had 
done was for the old justice. One of them, I 
found afterwards, was my prisoner’s father; 
but there was no difference between him and 
the others, unless it was his hesitation and 
something pathetic in his voice, — a tremble 
breaking through his smiles ; for he smiled 
like the rest, and said his welcome, though 
the last to make it. 

Even the old justice was on the beach, as 
little, and his pipe as big, as ever, puffing and 
176 


April 

swearing, alternately, to the awe of the 
islanders and my amusement. Children and 
women stood round, admiring, not us, but 
the justice ; and a crowd of young girls looked 
on from the outskirts, probably seeing more 
of us than did their mothers. 

But April was nowhere among them. I 
suppose I expected she would be nearest the 
water, and would spring into my arms when 
I landed, and was disappointed. Such a fool 
had love made me ! Iam only surprised now 
that I did not ask for her, but made out to 
keep my mouth shut upon that, and followed 
the grave little justice through his crowded 
people without other confession of my feeling 
than such as they might have guessed from 
my wandering glances among them, if they 
knew I had seen April. 

As soon as we escaped, the old justice 
dropped back to my side, and began talking 
with his former loquaciousness about the 
weather and fishing, as dumb to my business 
as originally, which, considering the way I 
had performed it, was not disagreeable ; and 

*77 


12 


April 

this time I did not interrupt him, though I 
could not join in his rhapsody. 

On the way to his house, he showed me 
where April’s proud grandfather and grand- 
mother had lived ; and I fancied I saw her 
face looking through a window. I know I 
saw a man’s face in another, the two mingling 
horribly in my imagination, and I caught the 
old justice’s shoulder harder probably than I 
intended, for he swore at me in surprise. I 
apologized, and we went on, he to the old 
tune of the weather, I to something which 
could not be danced, hardly walked. 

In the house he pulled out the same heavy 
chairs, and we sat down as before ; and he 
went on with his story, after he had ordered 
a maid, whom he chucked under the chin, to 
bring us wine and some supper. The wine 
was better than mine to which I had planned 
him an invitation, though brought up in old, 
labelless bottles, because in them it may be ; 
for nowhere else does wine gather all the 
sunshine and air of Old France. But, in 
my mind, no one was ever appreciative of 
178 


April 

wine or of stories ; and at last I told him 
that I must see April, abruptly as J tell it. 
Mad as I was, I could not help smiling at the 
justice’s consternation. He said the thing 
was impossible. But I could not see why. 
Then he urged me for my own sake not to go 
near her. I replied that I would certainly see 
her, with his help or without it, and told him 
that I intended nothing dishonorable, which 
was true ; for I only thought of making her 
wholly and irrevocably mine. 

His face lightened a little at this, but only 
a little. Yet he finally said he would go with 
me, and he did, though not until after such 
deliberate preparations that I was mad with 
impatience. I had wondered over his care in 
filling his pipe the first time I watched that 
operation ; but he had stumbled with haste, 
then, compared with his present exactness. 
When the pipe was filled, he took down a 
blue broadcloth coat resplendent with shining 
brass buttons, and put it on with the help of 
the maid, whom he again called in for assist- 
ance ; and who caressed him and brushed 
179 


April 

him, he all the while chucking her under the 
chin, and once kissing her, if I was not mis- 
taken. It was almost a function, so carefully 
was everything done and so line did she make 
him. I had on my knockabouts, and looked 
upon them, in the midst of these preparations, 
with dismay. But there was no help for 
it ; and when we had started I thought no 
more about them, and am bound to say that 
neither maid nor justice seemed anyway con- 
scious of my appearance, noticing it as little as 
April did, afterward. 


V 

I CAN remember nothing, after this, until 
Smiles’s old wife opened the door. The 
justice could have said nothing, or my mind 
would have taken more than one step between 
the two houses, the way being short as this to 
me, however many steps my feet may have 
covered. 

The old crone was as much more terrible 
180 


April 

than her husband as he surpasses ordinary 
man. Eager as I was to look past her, my 
gaze stopped at her face with a terrified shock. 
Even now I know nothing of her story, or 
why she and Smiles mated ; and I never see 
her without some of that first horror, though 
I soon learned that what I felt should have 
been pity, for her wry old face masks the ten- 
derest and truest soul in the world. Some 
curious chance gave her a hideous covering, 
throwing the fairest and foulest close together 
in her, as so often happens ; but she never 
thinks of it, — an unconsciousness as wonder- 
ful, in its way, as April’s beauty. 

But the crone’s terrible countenance held 
my eyes only a moment, all in me going for- 
ward to April, who stood before a glimmering 
fire in the next room, her face level with, and 
between, two burning wax candles on the 
mantel, as monks surround the passionless faces 
of their shrines. 

I had heard footsteps, and a door close, so 
distinctly that they shake my ears now, but 
was unmindful of the sound in her presence, 
181 


April 

able and caring only to comprehend her. She 
smiled upon me as she had when on the 
Petrel , and said as little as she had there, 
though the nervous little justice plied her with 
questions. I suppose she knew he would 
answer himself and like such answers best, as 
every one does. 

Smiles’s old wife begged us to be seated, 
dragging chairs forward which I saw had not 
been made on the island. The whole room 
was of another world, and fitted the maid 
dressed in soft white, I noticed in undercom- 
prehension, though the pale stuff was cut and 
bound round her in the same fashion as the blue 
she had worn on the Petrel , and the same 
fillet held or loosened her yellow hair. 

I was worse stricken than ever ; but she 
never shifted her position, and her ineffable 
eyes still hid her feelings. I did not know 
whether she remained standing because we 
were unwelcome. It might have meant that, 
and the old justice, who had fallen abruptly 
into the chair the crone pushed under him, 
must have had such a notion ; for he jumped 
182 


April 

up as soon as he touched it, even more 
abruptly than he had sat down. I had not 
sat at all, of which, however, she may have 
been unconscious, thinking only of her own 
position, which may have been taken in de- 
fence, instead of discourtesy, or because that 
way she made greater impression, or she may 
have been entirely unconscious, — the best and 
I now think the real reason. 

Her action did not embarrass me as much 
as one would think. I remember that I 
smiled with her at the old justice’s antics. 

When April was minded, she could draw 
all in any man out of him, and I felt as I 
stood before her that she was lifting my life to 
her lips. All my impatience was suddenly 
gone. I felt the great words of love growing 
in me, knew I should say them without hes- 
itation, and that she would give me an audi- 
ence such as mistress rarely gives lover, 
allowing, even compelling me to make the most 
of myself and of the opportunity. 

Yet she said nothing. I did not expect 
her to mention her visit to the Petrel , or the 

183 


April 

fate of my prisoner. The visit seemed as 
natural to me as yesterday’s sunrise ; and I had 
utterly forgotten the wretch at St. John’s. 
Standing as I was, close to her as upon entering, 
I could look down where the silk rope crossed 
between her round breasts ; or up, past her 
smiling lips and dilated nostrils, into her great 
eyes, motionless, it seemed to me, under their 
heavy lids and the gold fillet. 

Then, oblivious of the justice and crone, 
who must have gazed upon us with astonish- 
ment, I told her that I loved her, that I had 
loved her always ; for there had been no time 
before I saw her and there would be none 
afterward, and asked her to come with me, 
to be my wife. I used no more words. 

I had intended more ordinary speech, only 
hoping acquaintance this first visit ; but all 
usual small talk fell from me as I looked upon 
her, leaving nothing beside the great words 
which a man can only say once in his life ; 
and I am sure it was as well, for she was great 
enough to hear the last word first, too great to 
hear anything less, when this was intended. 

184 


April 

I know she understood. Whether she loved 
me, I do not know. Yet, surely, a woman, 
when she draws all in a man out of him, as 
she drew all out of me, must know something 
of the strange operation, and will something of 
it. But she only shook her head. 

She answered the justice when he joined 
my entreaties, her voice, which had that in- 
herited tragic note in it sometimes heard in a 
woman’s, somehow carrying me back to the 
old man’s story, or back of it to her unknown 
father’s mysterious music ; and my eyes burned 
with suppressed tears. But when I looked 
up again, she still smiled, and there was no 
shadow in her motionless eyes. What she 
said to him was, also, as much of a refusal as 
she had made me. I did not expect him to 
move her for me, when I could not move her 
myself. 

Yet her great eyes never left me and never 
changed, and it seemed to me that she grew 
fairer while I waited before her, or showed me 
more and more of herself notwithstanding what 
she withheld. I know I looked down upon 

185 


April 

her white shoulders, and saw her red lips with 
that smile upon them like beauty upon a 
blossom, felt her breath on my face and the 
fire of her cheeks, and heard the soft rustle of 
her hair, as it moved in the draft of the candles 
or the fire ; I know I felt all this, for I feel it 
all now, as I look back upon her. 

Perhaps I should have taken her by force. 
Perhaps she made me too eloquent, cheating 
me into cheating myself. If I had stammered, 
or could not have spoken, and had thrown my 
arms round her, kissing the scornful smile — 
I am now sure it was scornful — from her lips, 
crushing them, hurting them with my love ; 
possibly, if I had done this there and then, 
she would have become my wife. There is 
much in that word, “ conquest.” I was igno- 
rant then, however, and minded her refusal, 
though not until it became impatient. 

You can imagine our exit. I almost knocked 
the old crone, who had been standing behind 
me, into a corner ; and the excited justice 
stumbled over his chair, completing the con- 
fusion it had been to him from the beginning. 
186 


April 

I fancied April laughed at us, but when I 
looked up all I saw was her unfathomable eyes ; 
and they were all that I saw, as I plunged out 
into the dark, followed by the gasping old 
man. 

I did not stop to hear his condolences, or 
for farewells, — a rudeness which must have 
shocked him inexpressibly ; but it only rounded 
out an evening which must have been as ter- 
rible to him as to myself, though I thought 
nothing of him, left him, as I say, to find his 
way home as he might, and plunged off by my- 
self toward the beach and the Petrel ; I knew 
not what else, for life, heretofore so orderly, 
was suddenly chaos. 

There was no one on the beach ; but I 
found the Petrel’ s tender, and pulled off in it, 
splashing the water. Every one had also 
deserted the yacht, — something that would 
have been unaccountable had I been in another 
mood. As it was, I cursed the men for 
drinking or chasing imaginary girls such a 
night, not guessing that they had left the 
Petrel one by one, — beginning with Bemus 
187 


April 

and ending with the younger of the tarry 
Gloucester men, — to see exactly what 1 had 
sought, though none of them dared to do 
more than look into April’s window. They 
were doing this unbeknown to each other and 
to me, when the justice and I stumbled from 
her door. 

I hung a light in the mast, and, after walk- 
ing the deck, I know not how long, turned 
in, though not expecting to sleep ; and I did 
not. 

The men came back as they had gone, one 
after another, the last away, first. It seemed 
to me that it took every dory on the island to 
bring them, their efforts to escape attention 
making all of them awkward, each dory bump- 
ing the Petrel repeatedly in spite of muttered 
imprecations, because of them, probably. I 
laughed as I heard one man after another sneak 
forward, trying to step softly in his great boots, 
every step, of course, exploding with noise. 

I counted them as they came aboard, childishly 
triumphant when I heard Bemus giving soft 
orders. Then he went below, leaving, as I 
188 


April 

was to learn, afterward, a single tarry 
Gloucester man on the watch. 

I have said I did not expect to sleep, and 
that I did not. While the crew were making 
their ridiculous recession, I followed them, 
escaping my mortification and despair with 
them, as a condemned man watches a fly, or 
a spider, or even the kinks in the rope which 
is to hang him. But when the last man was 
aboard and the great hush of untroubled night 
fell over the Petrel , I again turned toward 
April, staring into the dark, and tossing in my 
berth, as a man might on a griddle, brooding 
of the unutterable things which come with dis- 
appointment. I thought of the world and my 
work, and cursed both, laughed at notions 
and dear proprieties ; at women who change 
lives and fates because a drop of rain falls on 
their faces ; despised the petty ambitions and 
the multitude of word-chopping philosophers, 
loathed them, loathed everything as it fell into 
nothingness below this woman, and loathed 
myself most of all because I had not won her. 

I think I got out on my knees and grovelled 
189 


April 

before her, pleading with her to accept me, 
praising her as if she were listening. Perhaps 
all was done within my heart. I was cer- 
tainly in my berth when another dory came 
alongside the Petrel . 

My heart leaped when the boat touched. 
I had counted the men as they came, and 
knew that all belonging to the Petrel were on 
her. There was one other to whom I would 
have given the Petrel and all I possessed ; but 
I dared not think she would come. Yet she 
had come ; for I heard soft steps on the deck, 
and April came down the companionway, and 
straight to me through the dim light of the 
ship’s single lamp, as if she had always known 
the way. She laughed as she bent over me ; 
but I took her into my arms without question, 
without thought. Why think ? Thoughts 
are for the lost, or for those who have lost all, 
for such as I had believed myself before she 
came. With her in my arms, her hair falling 
over me, hurt by the great stone in her fillet, 
her heart beating mine, thought, notions, every- 
thing, except herself, passed. 

190 


April 

There may have been other such nights, but 
never to me. I heard the waves whispering 
along the sides of the Petrel , and the winds 
whispering answers. I knew what was done 
in the sky, and in the depths of the ocean. I 
could see the roots of the birches, the clear 
wine they squeeze out of the brown grapes of 
the earth, tasted it, and knew why such wine 
makes the tinkling leaves talkative and the red- 
faced lilies reel on the hills. I had taken 
great pride in the Petrel ; but her cabin was 
never so fair, every picture coming out, every 
column and panel ; and all the soft chairs were 
full of breathless shadows. 

April freed herself from my arms, finally, 
and looked on me, from the centre of the 
cabin, laughing at my mad admiration. She 
brightened the lamp, filling the room with 
soft glory, but shining brightest herself. The 
silk rope had fallen from one of her shoulders; 
but she was hidden, as Eve was, in the cloud 
of her hair. She looked at the pictures, at 
Theocritus, frowning over the curious Greek, 
while I told her he sung of her. She touched 
191 


April 

the curtains with the tips of her fingers, and 
bent over a bottle of Lubin I had brought for 
another, as one bends over flowers in a garden. 
After she had seen all my possessions, smiling 
from them to me at every discovery, she sank 
into one of the chairs — the deepest she could 
find, I remember — facing me, and, for the 
first time, seemed to listen to what 1 was 
saying. 

She had scarcely spoken when the old 
justice took me to her, and was even more 
silent now ; and it was the music of her speech 
which I heard when she. did speak, instead of 
her words. I can recall very little that she 
ever said ; but her voice is plain to me as the 
sound of my own when I try a word with my 
lips, in this silence. 

I told her she was indeed April, and I only 
rain falling upon her, confessed that what she 
did with me in the depths of her heart, into 
which I had fallen, was mysterious, — the 
process, the art, transformation, — but said it 
was enough that she blossomed. I praised her 
as she sat there before me, from the fillet, past 
192 


April 

her red lips and round breasts, to her feet, 
laughed at her for being so silent when all in 
her spoke. And she laughed in return ; but 
her great eyes grew larger and larger as I 
looked into them. 

Alas ! they were the dark earth into which 
the rain of my life, of which I had spoken, 
was falling. I say, alas ! for all rainfall is sor- 
row, and April, the fairest, hurts us most of 
all months ; but a month, or a woman, that 
gives us all things, has a right to take all of 
ourselves in return. What is man ? Only 
rain, or, at most, a cloud in the sky ! But all 
things meet in a woman ; and from her comes 
earth and heaven, hereafter and hell. 

O man, what a boaster you are ! But your 
boasts have succeeded ; and woman, who is 
all things, acknowledges your greatness ; or 
you think she does, because she listens to you 
and says nothing, which is the same thing to 
your vanity. How she must pity us ! Pray 
God she does not despise us ! 

We talked the night through, or I did ; and 
she never ceased laughing at me, and the fillet 
x 3 193 


April 

shone steadily. So I can say she said as 
much or more than I did ; I am sure it was 
sweeter. 

I got up once and read Theocritus to her, 
translating as I read, and said I would be 
goatherd and pipe to her across the great 
pastures, and said other things which were 
either great folly or the essence of wisdom ; 
though it made very little difference which, I 
am sure, for the sweetness of saying them was 
sufficient. 

What April thought of it all, I cannot guess. 
Did a woman ever tell her lover what she 
thought of his speeches ? Her smiles are all 
he knows of her impressions ; and they might 
be over his folly ; but he thinks she smiles in 
admiration, and he talks on, and is happy. 

I had been content in the world, and my 
happiness that night held all the terrible after- 
ward in it; but that night was supreme, an 
event by which to measure all that went before 
or came after, as every one knows who has 
come to a woman as I then came to April. 

Men’s relations or friendships with each 
194 


April 

other are always human, and therefore measur- 
able and describable ; but the love of a man 
and a woman is cosmic, as if two stars leaned 
from their courses and touched. It may end 
in utmost disaster, or a new thing may come 
to pass under heaven ; but it is never cheap, 
never of human convenience or invention. I 
understand why philosophers argue ; but love 
is as mysterious as ever, though the whole of 
it was in that night. 


VI 

I N the morning I went up and told Bemus 
to send for Smiles’s wife, and said the 
man he sent was to stop at the old justice’s, 
and tell him that April was with me. 

A queer look came into his face at my order, 
or when he heard April was aboard. She had 
not tied up her boat to the Petrel , or it had 
broken away; for it was not there to betray 
her. There had been a singular token of 
her presence that morning, but he had not 

*95 


April 

discovered its significance. If he heard me 
talking to April in the night, he must have 
thought I was reading Theocritus, for our con- 
versation was almost all mine, as I have said, 
and I am sure was in Theocritus’s temper. 
So, when I said she was with me, Bemus was 
altogether surprised ; and his feelings broke 
through his countenance. I understood why 
murder is easy, while he looked at me, and 
why it is hard, even impossible, not to com- 
mit it. But he turned on his heel at last, and 
I heard him repeat my order to one of the 
Gloucester men. (I did not notice that the 
other was nowhere in sight.) 

I am sure that it was not being upon deck 
in the sunlight which saved me ; men may 
obey as Bemus did out of habit, or because 
they are hopeless. His secret is plain to me 
now ; then it entirely escaped me. I could 
only shiver at something that was disagreeable 
— though I did not know why — something 
which passed as soon as I went back to April 
and my man brought us our breakfast. 

April took the dishes from my hands that 
196 


April 

morning in shy wonder, but tasted them all. 
Any woman would do as much ; and the line 
old manners of France had come out in her 
like an instinct ; besides, she had probably often 
had the old justice at her table. She touched 
my wine and smiled at me with her lips in it ; 
at which I, of course, reached over the small 
table — so small our feet touched underneath 
— and took both her hands, and the glass, in 
mine, and kissed her, the dew of the wine still 
upon her lips. 

The old crone came in an hour, bringing 
everything according to her wisdom. If I had 
disliked her before, her manner then would 
have won me. She took all as a matter of 
course, ordering the state room, which had 
been prepared for another, and was now to be 
April’s and mine, without directions, stowing 
the boxes she had brought, like an old sailor. 

Everything went in sublime matter of course. 
April seemed to have no thought of anything 
outside the Petrel y listened to all I said of the 
small craft with the absorption of a child. I 
told her who built it and of my oversight, said 
197 


April 

it was all unknown forethought of her, and 
that she must have been with me when I 
planned it, in spite of her not being able to 
remember. I told her about myself, my life 
in the world, and what I had done, and how 
pitiful and mean it was beside her, and kissed 
her again and again for sweet emphasis ; and 
she listened, and sometimes kissed me in return. 

How simple everything seemed ! I had 
been born for that day and for her, could see 
through all days to the end of the world, 
knew exactly where and how we would live, 
and exactly what our life would become ; at 
least I told her I did, and she did not deny me. 

That afternoon the old justice came aboard; 
He looked as if he had not shifted his clothes 
since the maid got him ready the night before ; 
and I could see he was regarded by old 
Smiles with especial awe. He was wonder- 
fully serious and important, frowned upon me 
when I leaned over the rail to assist him ; and 
I think he had something which he thought 
very grave to announce. But when he saw 
April, who was behind me, his assumption of 
198 


April 

dignity departed with almost ridiculous sud- 
denness ; and he became as embarrassed as he 
had been the previous evening, though the 
crone was not upon deck to hand him a chair. 

He had no idea, however, of sitting down 
this time, until he had finished his business, 
being for once in the humor of ordinary mor- 
tals, refused to go below, and waved his hand 
impatiently when I mentioned my wine, at 
which I especially wondered. He said he 
had come to marry us, which did not surprise 
me, and I made no objection, my mind run- 
ning that way swifter than his ; and when he 
asked the usual questions, I eagerly assented, 
looking into April’s eyes as I promised and 
vowed. 

When he was done with me, he turned to 
her, his voice breaking in spite of himself into 
a tremble, afraid, probably, of her bewilder- 
ing moods, as he might be ; for she made 
no answer whatever, unless her laughter at his 
dumbfounded appearance could be so construed. 

But he was no more dumbfounded than I. 
She had heard me say I would take her, what- 
T 99 


April 

ever she might be, for ever and ever, without 
warning of such failure on her part at the 
same obligation. For a moment all the doubt 
that had followed her refusal the previous 
evening swept between us, and its horror 
overcame me. Then I remembered how she 
had come to me and what had passed in the 
night, and said, as so many have said before 
me, that if we were not already one no man 
upon earth could unite us, and that I would 
wait her own time for this outward thing that 
men count so important, and, content, smiled 
with her upon the dumbfounded justice. 

But I have said I was worse dumbfounded 
than he, and I was ; for when he saw she 
was going to make no answer, his quick wit 
helped him out of the difficulty. He said he 
was her sponsor and guardian, and had power 
to answer for her, looking up with a frown 
to see if there were any to deny him. As 
Bemus was nowhere to be seen, and the 
mouths of the red-headed Swede and the tarry 
Gloucester man who was on deck, were* too 
agape for any utterance, and the old crone and 


200 


April 

Smiles were nodding their heads with great 
admiration, his opinion was safe from objec- 
tion, except such as was made by April’s soft 
laughter, which might have been only amuse- 
ment, So he went on with the service, ask- 
ing and answering the questions so gravely 
that April grew serious, clasping my hand, 
which had scarcely been out of hers all the 
morning, tighter than ever when he pro- 
nounced us man and wife. 

I hoped the curious proceeding had really 
meant all the fine old words stood for, if they 
were not wholly or in any way legal. I had 
so meant them, and have so kept them to this 
day. The old justice seemed perfectly satis- 
fied, recovered his wonted serenity imme- 
diately after his : ‘ Amen ! 9 for he had prayed 
over us like a priest. 

I ordered wine, afterward, and sent enough 
forward to the crew to make them all drunk, 
as it probably did, though they were singularly 
silent. The justice drank to us both, and we 
to him, April touching the glass, which both 
of us held like a loving cup, drinking alter- 
201 


V 


April 

nately with me to the long life of the old man 
and his long rule. 

Then he took out his pipe from some im- 
mense pocket and let me fill it, solemnly 
directing the operation, and when it was lit, 
sat in the cloud of its smoke and told more of 
his old stories, all of us sitting upon deck in 
the warm afternoon. 

The taste of my wine in his mouth must 
have pleased him; for his first tale was of the 
way he came by the wine in the labelless, 
dusty, old bottles. He said it was brought 
over the water years before, by one of the 
Jesuit fathers, for an altar long since demolished. 
The father had come out of great love for the 
Church, and had had greater pity, when here, 
for the heathen upon the dark main who were 
without the Holy Religion. Occasionally 
they came to the island ; and he had baptized 
some of them ; but such converts were few, 
and could not satisfy his great yearning. So 
one day he begged one to take him to his peo- 
ple, and, when he consented, went with him, 
knowing no other than the single uncompre- 


202 


April 

hending savage. He knew as little of their 
speech ; but he carried a crucifix with him, 
and hoped that the few words of his religion, 
which he brokenly uttered in the wild tongue, 
would charm the ears of the Gentiles. How 
he labored and suffered, his adventures and 
the success of his preaching, none but the 
Indians ever knew ; for none of the islanders 
saw more of him until the convert who had 
taken him from them brought him back trans- 
fixed, like Saint Sebastian, with arrows. The 
islanders buried him — the justice showed us 
where, from the Petrel — and no one touched 
his possessions, until a successor came, many 
years afterward. This priest drank of the 
wine and liked it, and, jovial-minded, invited 
some of the islanders to join him, one of 
whom had been an ancestor of the old jus- 
tice’s. While they were carousing one 
midnight, and fuddled, or in mood for the 
remarkable, they saw the door suddenly open, 
and the old Jesuit, still transfixed with arrows, 
entered, leading the devil, whom he introduced 
to his successor, and rebuked him for having 
203 


April 

forgotten, and then vanished. This at least 
was what the riotous priest, and all, except 
the old justice’s ancestor, said had happened. 
The latter had seen nothing whatever, though 
he had drunken more than the others. He 
swore it was only good wine ; but all his 
companions had fled, taking after the two 
priests, and leaving him with the devil, which 
was how he, and therefore the story-teller, 
had come by the wine. 

The justice smoked his pipe a brief interval 
in silence, stroking it and blowing the smoke 
upward, and then held it in his hands long 
enough to tell us another story, I listening as 
silent as April. This was a tale of the island’s 
first settlers. 

The island had been visited many summers, 
he said, by codfishers from Old France who 
came for the season and then forsook it, leav- 
ing only the refuse of camps, and curing 
flakes, and sometimes a stove boat, or even a 
wreck. No woman had ever come with them. 
But one spring, a maid, greatly loving one of 
the captains and sorrowful at the thought of 
204 


April 

being without him, hid herself in his ship, 
and after fasting many days revealed herself to 
him, whereupon he, joyful of her company, 
forgave her, and both were glad. His ship, 
as was seemly, had greater luck than any other 
of the fleet throughout the season. But she 
was ashamed to return, so he, not minded to 
be without her, sent his catch and ship home 
by another, resolved to wait upon the island 
until the vessels came back the next summer. 
So they kept their great vigil of love alone through 
the winter, and never forsook the place after- 
ward. Fishermen are most superstitious ; and 
when others beheld this man’s good fortune, 
they were like minded ; and all, who could find 
them, brought wives or sweethearts the next 
spring ; who, seeing the great love of these 
two, were persuaded to stay with them, their 
husbands and lovers sending the unfortunate 
back with the catch of the season while they 
made themselves merry in the long winter ; 
“ as we do to this day,” the old justice finished, 
smiling upon us. 

His pipe had gone out, but I lit it again ; 

205 


April 

and as soon as the cloud it made was again 
dense enough to inspire him, he began what he 
said must be his last story ; for it took him 
longer to tell these stories than it does me to 
repeat them, all their quaint grace being lost 
in my writing. 

His last story was of another priest, of great 
name in old France, who loved the daughter 
of one of the governors of Quebec. 

I knew, from the beginning, that this tale 
meant more to us, in some way, than had the 
others ; for, if his own smoke inspired him, 
he looked curiously at April, again and again, 
while telling it. 

In spite of this, the story seemed to me 
the poorest he had ever told, so near com- 
monplace, or uncharacteristic that I thought 
I had caught him napping, and was of a 
mind to tell him I had heard the story before. 
All that was strange in the tale was that it 
ended upon this island. The governor’s ship, 
that carried the lovers as well as himself, had 
called here, on the way from Old France, to 
leave some one, or for fresh water, or because 
206 


April 

sight of the green land gladdened the gover- 
nor’s eyes. This had been the lovers’ oppor- 
tunity and they took it, hiding, until the 
governor had to abandon them, in the forest, 
some say at the foot of Mont Joie and that 
the priest gave it this name as, stripped of his 
cassock, he looked up from the girl’s lips to its 
lilies. The old justice said the name was cer- 
tainly old as their coming and I understood 
that a lover might have been sponsor. After 
all, it may have been my love for April 
which made the story commonplace. 

The old justice knocked the ashes from his 
pipe, before he finished the last story, I thought, 
and looked long at the red way of the sun, and 
into the shadows which had begun to follow 
it over the island. Once he did turn toward 
April as if he had still more to say to her ; 
but something, perhaps the magic of his 
pipe which he caressed, was too much for 
him, its smooth brown bowl, if it was his 
pipe, drawing him from us into a dreamy 
ecstasy in which he saw, I doubt not, all 
the smoky ghosts of the ten thousand pipes 
207 


April 

of tobacco which had passed his lips. When 
old Smiles came for him, he blessed us, and 
climbed into the swaying dory, and went 
away without the word I expected ; but I 
was sure then and am sure now that the priest 
and the girl were April’s forebears. Of 
course I never asked her whether she knew 
more than I of the matter. 

It had been a good day, such a day as 
should follow the yesternight. It would have 
been perfect had not Bemus told me, after 
the justice went away, that one of the tarry 
Gloucester men had disappeared. He had 
kept the watch last night, Bemus said ; and he 
wanted to know if I had heard anything of him, 
looking at me, in his queer way, as he asked the 
question, and speaking with as curious a voice. 

The Gloucester man had kept the watch 
last night ! So had I, — my great watch 
with April ; and I did not stop to think 
what he might have seen, or to find a reason 
for his disappearance, cursed Bemus, instead, 
and told him it was his own business: then 
went back to April. 


208 


April 


VII 

I HAD expected to sail the next da y, but the 
Gloucester man’s disappearance delayed 
us. His disappearance did not alarm me ; 
too many sailors slip away from their vessels, 
while in port, to cause any one who has 
dealings with them, apprehension. I was 
not even troubled to know how he had es- 
caped, sure, of course, that he and April’s 
boat had gone off together. The matter 
might have caused me some annoyance had 
April shown any anxiety, or desire to be 
gone. 

I do not know whether she had ever been 
away from the island, probably not ; but she 
showed no impatience to begin the trip, such 
as one would have expected, seeming content 
to sit above me in a deep chair on the deck, 
and listen, while I, prone upon rugs at her 
feet, told her what we would see, all I knew 
of the great world, what I had read in books, 
and what I guessed about love, — our love, 
x 4 209 


April 

especially, which I declared was more won- 
derful than that which any myrtle-crowned 
Greek had sung, or any other lover ever 
discovered in his mistress. 

She talked a little, thrilling me, as I have 
said, much as the islanders must have quiv- 
ered in the music of her father’s violin; but 
I cannot remember anything that she said of 
herself. She asked many questions about 
what I was describing, beguiling me into 
marvellous fulness, or sent me in new direc- 
tions by quirks of curiosity, curiously opposite 
her carelessness, or indifference, about sailing. 
We drifted around the Petrel's anchorage 
for a week, held within the adventureless 
length of its cable, without her once asking 
the reason. Perhaps I was not surprised. 
That she should choose to navigate me, in- 
stead of the ocean, seemed to coincide with 
my expectation, — to be perfectly natural. I 
had lost all curiosity about the world, except 
what came to me through her, which was, 
I knew, all that was worth seeing or knowing, 
and was not astonished that she should sit 


210 


April 

above me day after day with no amusement, 
except the sound of my voice, or the world 
as it came to her through my words and my 
passion. 

Every morning, when she came from under 
the hands of the crone, who dressed her and 
cunningly fitted everything that was upon her, 
she surprised me. Her hair always fell from 
the fillet in the one way over her ears and 
shoulders, always astir, blown or moving 
about her, restless, as it fell each side of 
her motionless eyes, as the waves above the 
still depths of the ocean. And her gowns 
were always cut in the same fashion, and 
bound about her with a silken rope ; but the 
color of both changed every morning, or 
seemed to, though I suppose she wore the 
same over and over, but alternated so deftly, 
as her month shifts its rain and sunshine, that, 
like them, each was always surprising. She 
took all the Lubin , stole it she smilingly de- 
clared ; but I preferred it blown from her 
body, and said so, likening myself to a man 
who lies with the violets. 


2 1 1 


April 

The sun rose each day of the breathless 
midsummer, out of an unclouded east, and 
went all the way of the forenoon and after- 
noon so unaccompanied, every hour perfect 
from trembling sunrise to trembling sunset, 
and when bursting into the full bloom of 
midday. 

Some men are moderately happy a life- 
time. If I had received only that week, I 
should not complain, I suppose, though even 
Satan must sometimes wish himself back in 
heaven, and I did not fall from my heaven 
by choice, as he did from his. 

Those days were so wonderful that I call 
them by the name men have given the most 
blessed existence they can imagine ; but I 
was daily drawn from the heights by the 
strange actions of the crew; though, with 
that remarkable spring possible to human 
nature, and especially that of men who are 
in love, I invariably recovered almost im- 
mediately. My vision of April was never 
dimmed, but by some amazing contra- 
diction, seemed fairer each time I looked 


212 


April 

up to her from the mysterious or horrible 
events. 

I have already spoken of Bemus’s singular 
manner when he told me of the Gloucester 
man’s disappearance. Two mornings later 
he came to me with the same look in his 
face, and said the other had followed his 
mate. 

I still thought of some petty dissatisfaction, 
though what, I could not imagine. Looked 
at in some ways, their following each other 
made my supposition probable. Yet, I could 
not help feeling the incident singular, and 
Bemus’s manner was not reassuring. I was 
certain that he knew more than he told, but 
would not admit that I saw anything remarka- 
ble by asking him farther, especially when 
he showed no disposition to vouchsafe any- 
thing more than bare information. He gave 
that in his curious manner which might have 
been alarm about the two men, or, as I after- 
wards thought, terror over knowledge of him- 
self ; or it was, perhaps, great hate of 
myself, as I felt at the time, though I had 
213 




April 

not then thought out the reason, being too 
much absorbed elsewhere to care longer than 
his look was upon me. 

Whatever the explanation of the two 
Gloucester men’s disappearance, it was un- 
lucky, for it postponed our sailing once more. 
I had persuaded Smiles to take the first va- 
cancy, not that he was unwilling to follow 
his old wife and April ; but he was doubtful 
of his ability to perform the strange duties. 
All his seamanship had been confined to a 
dory ; but I was sure I knew what was in 
him, and was not mistaken ; for the Petrel 
has never had such a seaman, his will, added 
to his crooked old body, being more than 
another man’s soundness. The second man 
I now needed was harder to find ; and 
Bemus showed no disposition to help me, 
had he the ability, remaining most of the 
time out of sight in his quarters. 

He did not come to me with any more 
disagreeable information concerning the crew, 
though not lacking such knowledge, but left 
the singular developments to announce them- 
214 


April 

selves, never speaking again, except once, as I 
shall tell you. 

The next to go was the red-headed Swede. 
He had been gloomy as the others, I remem- 
ber, moping forward, but always looking 
away from April and myself, and not once 
beginning one of his outlandish songs, or 
swearing. I distinctly heard the splash of 
his body in the water the third night, look- 
ing up from April, where she lay in the dark, 
at the sound, and guessing what it was. But 
when I went upon deck, I could see nothing, 
the whole harbor lying unflecked under the 
starlight. I ought to have turned out the 
men, and found if I had guessed the truth, or 
if it were only a fancy ; but I was afraid of 
that look of Bemus’s, or unwilling to confess 
to him what I feared was the truth. 

There was reason enough for calling the 
men out, for there was no watch upon deck, 
it having been the Swede’s turn, as I felt 
sure, though I would not confess it. It was, 
of course, only a matter of discipline ; for 
there could be no danger ; and I was not so 

2I 5 


April 

close to rules or customs, myself, as to expect 
exactness in others. So I went below after a 
long look at the stars, led back by my great 
desire for April. 

There was no Swede upon deck in the 
morning ; and when my eyes met Bemus* s 
as he looked back to me from the shadow of 
the cook’s galley, I knew that I had not 
been deceived in the night ; though even 
then I did not guess the occasion, cursing the 
crew for some mad, sailor, superstition. 

I hoped April still knew nothing of what 
had happened, and believed she did not ; for 
she had not seen Bemus talking to me, or at 
least had not overheard him. I, of course, 
had said nothing of the singular incidents, 
and also nothing of the original number of the 
crew ; and she had appeared to see little of 
them, as was natural when all was strange or 
new to her. She still seemed content. 

Bemus scarcely left his post, in the shadow 
of the galley, all that day. He was now 
alone, except for Smiles and my man ; and 
he took no notice of them, unless Smiles 
216 


April 

questioned him, looking, most of the time, 
across the harbor where his men had so 
mysteriously disappeared, or, farther still, to 
that shrill-voiced wife of his. Occasionally, 
when I happened to look longer upon him 
than usual, he glared back at me with his 
startling hate, strangely and marvellously chang- 
ing, I noticed, when his glance rested upon 
April. I never saw such a look in a man’s 
face as came into his, then, such unutterable 
and hopeless longing ; and at last I under- 
stood him and the others, and, hardhearted 
fool that I was, exulted, as every man exults 
in a woman with whom he can torture all 
others. 

He came back to us just before sundown, 
the look which had frightened me changed 
into another, such, it suddenly occurred to 
me, as might have been in the faces of the 
Gloucester men and the Swede when they 
forsook the Petrel ; and, looking up, I saw 
that April was wondering even more than 
myself. 

He said he could stay with the Petrel no 
217 


April 

longer, giving the loss of the Swede and 
Gloucester men as his reason. I knew he 
was lying, and that it would have been a 
beggarly excuse under other circumstances ; 
but, understanding him as I did, this troubled 
me none. I admired him, exulted over him, 
and trembled for fear his fine courage would 
break, but it did not, though he was whiter 
than when I found him guarding the murderer 
from April. He got his dunnage together 
in the Petrel' s tender, and, asking Smiles to 
set him ashore, shoved the boat off, staring at 
April across the widening water, and she as 
intently upon him. 

No one could have endured it ; and when 
he suddenly leaped out of the tender, as one, 
at least, of the Gloucester men, and the Swede 
must have done from the Petrel , and disap- 
peared in the deep or merciful waters, I felt 
that what I had expected had happened, 
though I gasped at the horror of it. I leaped 
up to hide him from April ; but she had seen 
all, and my heart swung back and forth, like 
something pendulous in me, as I saw her 
218 


April 

incomprehension and wonder. Even now I 
do not know whether she wondered how 
any one could so put an end to his homage — 
homage that she accepted from every man like 
a queen which every woman is naturally — 
or whether she wondered what could be great 
enough to make him give her up. I could 
see she was troubled over something greater 
than Bemus* s drowning, terrible as that was. 

Smiles cruised over the spot where Bern us 
had disappeared, his curious cries sounding 
like shrieks, as they came over the water. 
But it was no use ; none of us saw anything 
of Bemus afterward ; and the crooked man 
rowed mournfully back. 

Sometimes I think that Bemus, far as he 
went, only followed the Gloucester men and 
the Swede, that they had sunk as straight 
under the Petrel as he from her tender, and 
that he had known how they had deserted, 
and it was horror of this which I had seen 
in his eyes. It was a long swim to any point 
on the island from the Petrel's anchorage ; 
and the harbor was unflecked by man’s head 
219 


April 

or the arms of a swimmer when I went upon 
deck after hearing the Swede fall into the 
water ; and no one ever saw anything of the 
three men upon the island. But April’s lost 
boat was finally found upon the opposite 
mainland, where my men if they escaped 
would certainly leave it. A month or two 
after this I thought I saw the red-headed 
Swede leaning over the rail of a fisherman we 
were passing. I know the harbor was only 
starlit the night he disappeared, and that a 
swimmer could hide his head on such a night 
behind almost any wave. So I believe, in 
spite of occasional doubts, that the Gloucester 
men and the Swede only deserted, and still 
wander somewhere about the world haunted, 
as I am, by April’s face. 

I did not discuss the matter to such length 
at the time. Even the revelation of Bemus’s 
startling look did not give me much serious 
thought. I pitied him with that pity which 
is almost contempt, as every lover pities the 
miserable men who for any reason are undone 
in the struggle for his mistress’s appreciation. 


220 


April 

His fine honor in withdrawing escaped me 
almost as entirely as did his dishonor to his 
shrill-voiced wife and those four screaming 
children. He soon fell out of my conscious- 
ness as completely as he had fallen from 
sight. Only Brown was left of my original 
crew ; but April filled me, and I should 
have missed no one had we suddenly become 
the last man and woman in the world. 

April was not as quickly reabsorbed. She 
smiled less than usual that evening ; her 
eyes wandered continually across the waters 
where Bemus had disappeared, and, when 
upon me, asked questions deeper than lips 
could have framed. She said nothing, real- 
ized plainly as ever, I suppose, how little one 
can make another understand worded ques- 
tions. Perhaps she debated the difference 
between love that died, and love that lived 
for her sake. Possibly she followed the dead, 
as many a woman has wandered the depths 
of hell after some retreating spirit, and drank 
of the cup he held up to her with averted face. 

But the taste of such wine does not make a 


221 


April 

woman less sweet to the living. The deeper 
they drink, the more wondrous they are. 
Pale Persephone, queen of the gray land of 
Dis, is not less fair than when she gathered 
asphodels in her mother’s sunny fields. Was 
she not herself aware of the dread charm of 
the dead, before Pluto stole her ; or, why 
did she gather asphodels in Sicily ? Surely 
there were other flowers in Demeter’s fields ! 
Demeter’s wailings fill our ears. We do not 
know Persephone’s own mind ; she was silent 
in the noisy quarrel between mother and 
husband. I say we do not know her, yet 
her silence showed how fit she was to queen 
it over the gray land ; and, if Pluto stole her, 
he took one who tempted, wooed, him with 
his own flowers. Demeter could not under- 
stand. What mother ever did understand why 
her daughters are content outside her sunny 
fields ? But all others understand. If Jove 
suffered Persephone to come back to Sicily, 
it was not pity of her, but of Demeter. How 
could he pity Persephone ? Did he not him- 
self, after all his loves, chase her ? No one 


222 


April 

has sung of this, or told us how he found her, 
or with what wonderings he crept down from 
his great hills and took the dim way across the 
gray land to her place. For Jove is dead ; 
all the gods are dead, all of love for Persephone. 
Was it not well to gather asphodels? I think 
so. And April was not less fair to me for the 
dead who loved her. 

Such, or some such comprehension of wo- 
man’s infinite capacity explains our sublime, 
and delirious, and even ridiculous, attitude 
toward her. We strain ourselves and go mad 
trying to attain to her. Whoever wrote the 
story in Genesis of those sons of God, who 
mated with the daughters of men, because 
they were fair, wrote out of the truth of this 
feeling. Quibblers do not deceive any one by 
calling his story a fable ; for we have all seen 
as fabulous fairness in some woman’s deep 
eyes ; and, if we lie to her, and boast, and 
are cruel, it is because we fear we may lose 
her ; just as the old story-teller prated of the 
wickedness of the children of the divine mar- 
riages to scare women from the gods* embraces. 

223 


April 

I suppose it was in some such way that I 
persuaded April back to me from the love of 
the dead. I remember how breathless my 
speech was that night, and how I gazed upon 
her, looking up from the rugs into her serious 
face which turned from me to the mysterious 
waters and back again long enough for me to 
pour ail of myself into her heart, — or all I 
imagined myself, and all I could steal from 
other men, living and dead. No one scruples 
about robbing others to make himself brave or 
great in a woman’s eyes, as I tried to make 
myself in hers. 

That April’s eyes finally rested upon me 
and that she listened to me, may only prove 
my sublime lying, as I fear. I am perfectly 
conscious, as I was to some degree then, that 
desire for a woman will make any man almost 
magnificent ; but, having obtained her, I 
cared nothing for this. When she looked 
upon me I was unconscious of anything else, 
and the earth could have fallen from beneath 
us when she stooped over me and I never 
have known it. 


224 


April 

I saw the night come, as I looked ; but it 
was because its shadows fell over her face. I 
knew the stars had come out, but it was be- 
cause of their light in her eyes. And, as I 
looked, that sense of her affinity with the 
dark earth, which lives and dies in itself with- 
out our knowing why and to which at the 
most we are only rain, as I have said, was 
strong upon me, though I may not have 
realized it as I do now. 

But I loved her, and rose to her, as she 
stooped over me in the dark, and kissed her 
again and again, passionately as a storm kisses 
the earth. 


VIII 

O LD Smiles finally found another crew, 
all of the men curiously like him- 
self ; though all, with one exception, were 
straight enough of leg and arm. Battered old 
wrecks they vrere ; but their experience had 
made them wise in every way. When Smiles 
stood them up in a row before me on the 
*5 225 


April 

Petrel' s deck, gazing proudly at the three 
grizzled men, I knew he had made no mis- 
take ; though I laughed in their faces, asking 
them where they had so “ shivered their tim- 
bers.’ ’ One of them had only a single eye, 
and I immediately dubbed him : “ Cyclops.” 
Another lacked one hand, which was made 
up, in some fashion, by a blacksmith’s hook ; 
he was introduced as “ Hook” by old Smiles. 
The other had half of one of his cheeks shorn 
away, done in some tremendous quarrel, and 
was clept “ Whiskers ” by the grim humor 
that had sponsored his mate. 

They took my joke without a wink, and the 
grog, which Brown made for them in honor 
of the occasion, in as cool a fashion ; but all 
understood the Petrel ; and of course all under- 
stood their islands ; and, what was more impor- 
tant, all had seen April many times, and looked 
upon her now, as she laughed at them, by my 
side, as unwinkingly as they had listened to my 
joke or drunk the rum, and with similar appre- 
ciation. I wanted no more fools about, perhaps 
feeling myself all the fool the yacht could carry. 

226 


April 

I put Hook in command, not because he 
was any better seaman than the others, but 
from a notion that a man before the mast 
would need both hands ; though I found my- 
self mistaken, as he afterward showed what his 
hook could do. I would have made Smiles 
second, or even first, had he not protested 
that he was only a doryman. So I put 
Whiskers second, in honor of his scars. 
Degree did not trouble these worthies. 
Cyclops and Smiles had as much to say as 
any one in fair weather ; though I am bound 
to acknowledge that in a storm all were silent 
except Hook. There was never any dis- 
agreement. 

With this crew, and after another visit from 
the old justice, during which he shook his 
head dubiously over what I told him of the 
singular disappearance of my first crew, and 
livened himself and me with his pipe and 
other stories, we again set out ; for what 
port, I have not the slightest recollection, 
probably for none, or none in particular. 

I had no wish to go back to the world, I 
227 


April 

am sure. Each moment was a port ; and 
each island that we touched as fair as an- 
other, or fairest of all, April having come to 
it. I gave no orders, and suspect that my 
merry crew steered by their vagaries only, 
one man suggesting one day’s course, and 
another that of the next, which might be 
exactly opposite. All were guided, at most, 
by nothing more consistent than desire for old 
cronies of whom all the islands seemed full, 
and who welcomed them with enthusiastic 
gusto, not lessened, I am afraid, by my grog, 
which they drank like water ; though like 
water it seemed to work no harm in their 
tough old insides, only making them merrier 
and more content, the purpose of all good 

grog- 

The ridiculous crew was all that kept me 
upon the earth. When they were still, or 
upon shore with their old mates, and April 
and I were alone, except for the old crone in 
the cabin and Brown in his cook’s galley, who 
were no more in evidence than if not aboard, 
and I looked from April’s eyes to the far off 
228 


April 

trembling hills, the Petrel seemed cruising in 
air, my naked soul borne upon it. I was 
piloted by her eyes through the purple haze 
toward something ineffable which I expected 
with a gaping heart, and which I guessed 
would be the secret of secrets, or the place 
where a woman’s soul is naked as a man’s, or 
where they both lose their terrible individual- 
ity, and become the one they are drawn or 
compelled to be, — the one who, nathless, es- 
capes us all, and for whom, because unfound, 
we fill this world with incoherent cries. 

I told April that there was such a world, but 
she only smiled. When I proved the guess by 
my desire, she neither assented nor dissented ; 
though I am sure she knew what I could only 
guess. Such women know the world to come, 
though they smile at our guesses about it, or 
pretend surprise, or laugh at our folly ; for their 
still eyes have looked upon that world, which 
is what makes them so calm in this restless one. 

I might have looked upon the land, myself, 
had not some stormy shout or laughter of the 
crew always wrecked us, and dragged us out 
229 


April 

of the bewildering waters upon this humor- 
some old earth. Some quirk of theirs always 
arrested us, as we leaned across the gulf which 
has rent human nature, but which was about 
to close upon our touching lips, and we would 
fall apart again, short of the miracle, but 
smiling at their drollery. 

With that wreck of breathless things about 
us, we used to sit half the night, listening to 
the crew’s tremendous lies, as they drifted 
back to us across the deck, until we felt the 
sane earth solid under us again, or fell asleep 
like children in each other’s arms. 

The truths the crew could have told would 
have been amazing. I shiver now thinking of 
the whizzing bight of rope which probably 
took off Hook’s hand, or at the sickening 
swish of the bully’s knife as it sliced old 
Whiskers’s cheek, or over the nameless though 
certainly cruel accident which had suddenly 
shut out half the world to Cyclops. But they 
made their misfortunes the incidents of pre- 
posterous adventures, and made them more 
preposterous by putting them into new ad- 
230 


April 

ventures every night. Once Hook said a 
pirate had cut off his hand while he fought by 
the side of the great Admiral, Paul Jones, 
upon the Hornet (/), and that the loss had 
not hindered him from saving the Admiral’s 
life ; for, when his right hand had been 
tf cropped like a chicken’s topknot,” — this is 
his own expression, — he clapped his other 
upon the fallen cutlass, and struck off the 
pirate’s head so deftly that he never winked. 
The next night, he swore that a bear, which 
was sitting upon a rock on the coast of Labra- 
dor, where he was once wrecked, had eaten 
the hand, as he clung to a crack in the granite, 
and said he would have drowned had he not 
seized the bear’s paw with his other hand and 
dragged him into the water, and then climbed 
out over him upon the shore. 

All of these stories, and all the crew were 
full of them, were told with such supernatural 
gravity and minute detail, when questioned, that 
they were irresistible. None of the men be- 
lieved the others. They were too well aware 
of their own genius for fabrication to have any 
231 


April 

confidence in each other’s yarns. But each 
was evidently hurt by the others’ scepticism ; 
and when all, except the one who happened 
to be story-teller, shook their heads, or sniffed 
suspiciously, he would work out his tale to 
the utmost length, sometimes increasing its 
preposterousness, sometimes really making it so 
plausible that we leaned towards them, holding 
our breath, until one acute old salt or another 
would solemnly take his pipe from his mouth, 
and, almost indifferently, ask a question which 
would expose the cunningly devised fable at a 
stroke. But none of them was ever non- 
plussed. The story-teller would look mourn- 
fully about him at such times, as if aggrieved 
because so treated by friends, and then mend 
the vulnerable place slyly, or boldly, but 
always triumphantly. In the end, the listen- 
ers always showed mercy. They had stories 
of their own to tell. 

Sometimes April and I went ashore, walk- 
ing between wondering rows of my old friends, 
who saw nothing of me, however, but leaned 
over each other to see her. She always 
232 


April 

seemed entirely unconscious ; but all women 
seem that, and I do not know how much she 
received of their homage, or whether or not 
she liked it. I did not often mind, but some- 
times they became too frank, and it took my 
curses to restore them to their senses. 

Once I had to step on a daft boy’s toes. 
His face was almost as fair as April’s, — might 
have come as hers, undeliled, out of the an- 
cestral fountain of fair France. She answered 
his gaze with what almost seemed a smile of 
recognition, as if ancestors in them bowed to 
each other. My shoe brought him down to 
hard earth, however, or shook the fantasy in 
his head into thin air ; and I laughed as he 
sank back into the crowd, bewildered. Yet, 
if he lives, April’s face probably haunts some 
corner of his soul, into which his spirit occa- 
sionally wanders unknown to his friends, or 
even to his wife, if he has one, though she lie 
in his arms. 

Often, I led April to the highlands, going 
up by the sweet way of the brooks which 
sung to us as we passed, or revealed another 
233 


April 

like her in their depths, as if she and they had 
the same spirit, as I suspected. 

She never imitated my fancies. Brooks 
sing, but they do not write sonnets. Most 
women are like them, and not rhymesters, 
but are the spirit of rhyme, the theme, the 
ineffable something which makes every man 
vocal who passes. April listened to Theoc- 
ritus when I read, and understood perfectly, 
exactly as the brook understands the spring in 
the dark earth and the rain that falls into it 
out of the clouds, or as the sea, whose arms 
are uplifted for the rain’s embraces. She was 
akin to the things he described. She lis- 
tened to me — and I was never more fanci- 
ful — and grew, as the brook grows beneath 
cloud and rain, by all I poured into her 
heart ; and I saw how unutterably fair she 
became, and loved her with a great love. 

Her perversity had entirely disappeared. 
Love, shrewd from numberless affairs of 
maids, makes lovers happy now by allowing 
only a single thought between them. Some- 
times two wayfarers speak the same word as 
234 


April 

they pass, and wonder over it ; but every 
pair of lovers in the world has thought 
simultaneously for weeks, or months, or even 
years, and taken it as matter of course. What 
astonishes philosophers is commonplace to 
lovers. And this maid, who had refused me 
everything, now sat by me as much mine as 
one of my own thoughts. 

Naturally much of April’s curiosity was 
soon satisfied. In such a mood as ours, men 
and women are nearest transparent ; and we 
fell into longer and longer silences, each other’s 
devotees. A man rarely talks to himself. 
There is rarely any need. Words are equally 
roundabout to those who have such vision of 
each other. You who read this will think 
this the miracle for which I looked ; and, in 
those days, I thought it was. Even now, I 
cannot understand why it was not what I 
desired ; I only know it was not. 

Great marvel as love is, it only holds the 
souls of men and women in suspension. There 
must be something more than love, though no 
one has ever found it. Without it, all lovers 
235 


April 

are momentarily in danger of what was so 
soon to overtake April and myself. Not pre- 
cipitating in each other, any day some acci- 
dent or trifle may spill or break one life upon 
the other. Of course the accident may never 
happen, and they may keep the sweet sus- 
pense forever ; but it often does happen, so 
often that all of us know such brute and 
broken actors of the tragedy. What never 
happens here is the miracle which would make 
such a tragedy impossible. 


M Y crew had fine noses for storms ; and 
for a month, we escaped every touch 
of one, always snug in some pocket of a 
harbor of which there were scores, familiar 
to them, in the islands. Safe in them, we 
did not mind the weather ; it threw us even 
more upon each other. There were always 
those merry men, any one of whom could be 
opened up with a glass of wine, and with two 
2 36 


April 

glasses made to spin as tremendous yarns to 
us as to his fellows. April sometimes sang 
throughout the storms. I remember now that 
she rarely sang, except in such weather. Per- 
haps she sang then to keep her spirits, as her 
father played his violin, or because the storms 
somehow found the range of her low voice. 

But one day we were overtaken, miles at 
sea. What we were doing so far out, I can- 
not say, knowing nothing of the vagaries of 
my crew, as I have said. One of them may 
have been telling a more than usually interest- 
ing story, and the man left at the wheel, lost 
in admiration, or tremendously engaged in 
showing how it could not have happened, 
equally interesting, entirely forgot himself, 
and left the Petrel to go straight away, — 
which, by chance, was out to sea. At any 
rate, we were miles out when one of the 
coast’s quick storms rose in the west, and 
came smashing down the water, howling like 
a demon. It was all done so quickly it 
might have been the work of a necromancer. 
One moment there was nowhere anything in 
237 



the clear air and sky, the next, by some sleight 
of hand, or art, the sky was full of rushing 
clouds ; and all things waited in strained agony 
for the shock. 

I looked up in awed fascination, not afraid, 
or speculating, but absorbed in the tremendous 
play, forgetting even April, for the moment. 
I say for a moment ; but I do not know how 
long it was before I felt her touch, and, look- 
ing round, saw she was trembling, and that 
all the red had fallen from her cheeks and lips, 
and that her eyes, which I had never seen 
moved before, were full of terror. 

I heard no more of the storm. In some 
occult way, I knew that the Petrel , bare as 
the crew in their terrific haste had stripped her, 
suddenly sank beneath us, and seemed falling 
through infinite space, and that, when I ex- 
pected to open my eyes upon the skeletons of 
ships and men in the great deep, she slowly 
recovered and rose to meet another blow, only 
to fall again as far ; but it was all unreal as 
falling in a dream. 

What was plain, was April’s abandon- 

238 


April 

ment to me. When I opened my arms, she 
hid in them. She had come into my arms 
that first night, and many times afterward, 
but always in such a way that I felt myself as 
much held by her arms as she was by mine, 
and that she only gave what she chose. Now 
she clung to me, wet with tears, and pitiful. 

“ I am your wife?” she whispered, tight- 
ening her hold upon me with fear that I only 
half realized was not altogether of the storm. 

“ As much as God and I can make you,” 
I answered her. 

She did not speak again ; but I could feel 
her sinking in my arms, yea, into myself, and, 
though I did not think of a lost woman, had 
some such sense of her as a pool of water 
must have of the drowned. But she was 
sweet to me as ever, sweet as the drowned 
are to pools of water, and I whispered to her, 
perpetually as the brook, and caressed her 
with as much gentleness. 

The tempest did not last an hour. In so 
short a time can all things change. I heard 
the thunder roll off into the east ; the slashing 
239 


April 

rain softened into a misty dew ; and, looking 
up the companionway, I could see the sun and 
that it was fairer than before. 

April finally stopped trembling ; but when 
I stooped to kiss her wet face, I felt her 
shrink from me. I thought it was memory 
of the storm, and did not press her ; but she 
appeared as much afraid of me when we went 
out upon deck and the sun shone in her face ; 
and her fear did not pass in the fair weather. 
It was unaccountable to me. Alas, I knew 
no more of her than a brook does of those 
who escape its sweet embraces ! But when 
she begged me to put about, I consented, 
laughing ruefully at myself, and trying to find 
my way by thinking how sweet she had been, 
which, if nothing else, would show how great 
a change there was in her. 

I have tried to recall some incident of the 
storm which escaped me at the time, some 
presumption of mine, in her abandonment, 
which would explain April’s sudden repulsion 
for me ; but I can remember nothing that I 
have not told. I had taken all her life ; but 


240 


April 

she had given all ; and, glad as I was, I had 
not exulted over her. 

The crew regretted the altered course as 
much as I. They took it for a reflection 
upon themselves, and went about with ridicu- 
lously mournful faces, as if protesting against 
distrust they knew deserved. I suppose it 
also cut athwart their plans. There may 
have been some crony they had missed, 
though I thought we had visited almost all 
the islands, some of them more than once, I 
imagined ; but I was uncertain where we had 
been, such things being very obscure to me, 
occupied as I was with April. They told no 
more stories, and I even heard them swearing 
at each other, — not that gentle cursing which 
is really good fellowship, but in angry irrita- 
tion. Once, Hook caught old Whiskers in 
his terrible grip, and swung him round and 
round, as a boy swings a frog on the end of 
a string, his great boots making a fearful clatter 
against each other and everything they struck. 
I laughed at them, but choked when I thought 
how much like them I was feeling. 

16 241 


April 

April retreated to the cabin as soon as we 
turned about, and Smiles’s old wife was al- 
ways with her, afterward. When I went 
into the cabin, as I was once or twice com- 
pelled to do before we reached the island, she 
always stood behind some chair or table if she 
could ; if this was impossible, she trembled so 
that I could not touch her. It was as if I 
had taken the place of the storm to her, as if 
it had somehow become incarnate in me to 
spite me for trying to shield her from it. She 
cried when Mont Joie hove in sight ; for joy, 
I was certain. When we sailed below it into 
the harbor, she laughed aloud, and again at 
the gay houses as they were revealed, merriest 
of all as her people came out to meet us. We 
had not been away six weeks ; but I have 
seen exiles of years come home with less hap- 
piness than April showed. Possibly, they had 
not been as far. 

I took her home, rowing the Petrel's boat 
myself, and old Smiles brought his wife and 
the boxes. I helped him carry the boxes 
into the house, and, not knowing what else 
242 


April 

to do, for April still seemed afraid of me, 
returned to the Petrel , and, after a few days 
and some refitting, put about for the world, 
taking all the crew except Smiles. I thought 
of things that needed attention if I was to stay 
upon the island, and I had no mind to leave 
it. There were also things which I wished 
to get for April ; and I hoped the strange 
harm done in the storm would be undone in 
my absence. 

I had not asked an explanation, did not 
know how. The indefiniteness, the un- 
certainty, was still too bewildering. Perhaps 
I was afraid to know. I only told her I was 
going, and sailed as soon as possible, more 
hurt than ever by her evident relief. 

Sometimes I thought that April was not a 
woman, wondered if she had not escaped from 
some Attic woodland, chased, perhaps, by 
ancient shepherds, or old Pan, to be lost 
upon our prosaic times. I could understand 
how the unhuman passion of a nymph would 
vanish in a storm or fright. April might have 
been even closer to the earth, I thought, and 
243 


April 

the storm have beaten down her blossoming 
love as a tempest does the petals of a lily, 
leaving her as different as it does the naked 
stalk. But this was fancy, — and where there 
was no need. 

The nymph was only a woman in the 
woods ; and there is no man who has not 
been as much puzzled by his wife or mistress 
as Pan, or the shepherds, were by forest maids. 
She loves him while she flies from him, or 
has her way with him, but hates him as soon 
as she falls into his arms. No woman ever 
seriously talks of trusting men, knowing it is 
as disastrous as it is to pluck a flower. But 
they sometimes forget. April forgot, and, 
surprised by the storm, had lost herself, for 
it was not less. That I was unconscious, 
even happier for the moment, did not deceive 
her. I might never have realized, or might 
have been content with her without the 
glamour, or I might have been more merciful 
than some. But she knew, and saw the 
inglorious days ahead, and the imminence of 
my discovery of her slavery. Every woman, 

244 


April 

who has lost her sweet dominance, must have 
moments of realization, oftener than not com- 
ing before he who is now indeed her lord 
and master knows or suspects anything. This 
was the reason of April’s fear, and her anxiety 
to escape from me. I knew she wanted to 
escape, and myself went away, hoping, of 
course, that she would sometime desire me, 
sooner, perhaps, for my temporary absence in 
the world. 

I saw no one while away that I knew, ex- 
cept the bankers, who explained my investments 
as best they could with my inattention. Most 
of my time was given to the tradesmen, from 
whom I bought all that I thought would please 
April, more interested in their fluttering yard- 
sticks than in a bank president’s grave estimate 
of a railroad, almost conscious of April’s won- 
der, above the precious stones, and of her de- 
light in the fine sheen and rustle of the silks, 
and in the cobwebby laces. All I bought 
was solely for her. There were pictures, and 
books, and many other things which would 
have delighted her ; but they would have been 
245 


April 

as much mine as hers, though I gave them to 
her. I wanted all I took her to be peculiarly 
her own. It was no scorn of pictures. I 
knew she could create a fairer from, or within, 
the silken fabrics than was upon any of that 
season’s canvases; and it was not scorn of 
books, for there was Theocritus whose last 
word I shall never read. I knew, without 
questioning, that none of the booksellers had 
anything fresher upon their shelves. 

I was almost happy while buying for April. 
It was the next thing to lovemaking. The 
shop people smiled at my anxiety ; and I 
could hear the clerks laugh covertly to one 
another, in the strange places to which my 
purpose took me. But I was indifferent, or 
surprised them still more by smiling back at 
them good-humoredly. 

I was determined to outdo the governor’s 
daughter in my gifts to her far off and fairest 
child ; and I am sure that nothing finer than 
the things sent down to the Petrel in curious 
crates and bales ever came from Old France ; 
or I am sure of everything except the fillet. 

246 


April 

I could find none in the city as fair, and pushed 
back all the jewellers’ trays, sometimes telling 
them their art had fallen, sometimes listening 
to their suggestions, but only to tell them, 
finally, that they were already far outdone, 
though without a hint of April’s fillet ; for I 
would not have it imitated, even in the farthest 
corner of the world. 

My crew was merrier than I, so vociferous, 
once or twice, that policemen had to cool their 
ardor inside their keeps, or try, for it was 
scarcely more, I thought, as I listened to their 
convulsed examiners when I went to pay their 
always minor fines. I laughed myself as 
they boasted of their adventures to one an- 
other when they came back to the Petrel . 
Each made his affair most tremendous as 
they had made all their stories among the 
islands. 

But the tradesmen’s wares and wild scrapes . 
of my crew could not keep me in the world 
longer than a month, if it were a month when 
I again turned the Petrel toward the islands. 

We sighted Mont Joie five days after sail- 
247 


April 

ing, just as the sun was going down, my heart 
leaping into flame with it, and made our way 
into the harbor through the dusk, old Hook 
knowing the harbor as he did the way across 
his cabin floor. No one met us, of course, 
none knowing anything of our coming. 

Anxious to see April, I had the boat lowered 
before we dropped our anchor, and taking the 
oars myself, rowed in alone. I found Smiles 
upon the beach, nearly scaring him out of his 
senses, in the shadows, by running against 
him. I thought it was strange, as I had made 
a deal of noise in landing. Possibly he was 
frightened because it was I ; or he had 
something on his mind which he was afraid to 
tell. I was certainly too impatient to stop to 
listen to anything he could say, and when he 
did attempt to detain me, broke away, telling 
him to mind the boat. I could hear him 
mumbling, as I hurried up the shell-strewn 
road through the fishflakes which smelled 
sweet in my nostrils, and meant more to me 
than Smiles’s gibberish. 

The old crone came to the door to let me 
248 


April 

in. I could hea/her fumbling with the fasten- 
ings, and cursed her for her slowness, but 
softly ; for I did not want April to hear. 

There were steps inside, other than the old 
crone’s, — such steps as I had heard when I 
went there with the justice ; and a door opened 
and closed somewhere, as then, as if some one 
had gone out another way, but I only thought 
of April. 

She was standing where I found her that 
first time, when I went in ; and my heart 
leaped, for I saw she was in white, my eyes 
rising swiftly from the silken girdle to the 
fillet round her brow, passing her face in curi- 
ous unconsciousness, which was well, for, 
when I did look into her face, her eyes were 
hard, though the old smile was upon her lips. 

Her eyes had never been hard before. I 
did not know then that hardness follows fear, 
and is the defence of fear, though I felt my 
weakness against it at once. 

No one was in the room besides ourselves, 
the old crone having crept into some back 
portion of the house ; but when I looked 
249 


April 

around, awkwardly trying to recover from 
April’s surprising greeting — she had not said 
a word — I knew at once that some other had 
been there, and instantly guessed that, whoever 
it was, I had heard his steps, and that he had 
gone through that opened door as I came in. 
Probably — great God, how that probability 
hurt ! — it had been of him that Smiles wished 
to speak. 

There were ashes in a little tray upon the 
mantel behind April, and the room was tinged 
with their smoky ghosts. I looked at the 
ashes, and wondered if love, burned, would 
make as many ; and wondered more, and 
madly, what had happened in the time in 
which that smoke had grown so gray in the 
corners of the ceiling, something that would 
make me gray and old I guessed, as I guessed 
many other things, for men think quickly at 
such times. 

And it might have been all guess. When 
April spoke, and said she was glad to see me, 
I tried to think it was an ugly dream. She 
stood before the mantel, fair, I saw, as I, 
25° 


X' 


April 

while away, had almost been afraid she would 
not be ; fair, as at any time in all the delirious 
cruise of the Petrel . But there was a differ- 
ence. Though she sat down and questioned 
me, and listened with some of the old inter- * 
est, she was different ; and her eyes, where I 
had seen the world to come and the depths 
of this, were cold. 


X 

A PRIL did not question my right to stay. 

She might have reminded me that she 
had refused to bind herself in our onesided 
marriage, which would have been true. Had 
she done so, I could, of course, have urged a 
stronger, or, at least, another tie than that 
which the old justice had sought to impose. 
But she gave no such opportunity. She 
waited, as a woman will, for the distressing 
situation to right itself, instead of forcing it as 
a man would do, and as I attempted with 
some success. 

25 1 


April 

I did not ask who had been with her, wise 
enough to know, in spite of my distress, that 
it would have done no good, even had she 
answered me. If he were a rival, and she 
had given him any of the love which had been 
mine so little while before, anything I said 
would be too late. If she had given nothing 
and anything I said was unjust, and to speak 
at all would have been unjust under such cir- 
cumstances, then I should lose even the slight 
hold I had upon her. Mine was only the 
memory of a claim, I realized with choking 
bitterness as I looked upon her ; and the least 
injustice on my part would only give her 
right to refuge in the other’s arms. And there 
was a possibility, of course, though I did not 
believe it, that the whole thing was innocent 
of harm. I did not believe this, for I knew 
that no man could see her and not love her. 
I remembered what the old justice had said of 
her setting all the islanders by the ears, and 
recollected, with sudden sympathy, my pre- 
vious crew. Still, there might be nothing 
wrong. 


252 


April 

You must not think I argued so that night. 
The whole thing came and went almost with- 
out my knowing it, and void of anything like 
process of thought. What was almost solely 
evident to me was April, so near I might 
have touched her, yet farther than the world’s 
end. 

My restraint did seem to touch her, finally, 
and she looked up to me as I leaned heavily 
against the mantel, and, I thought, pitied 
me ; and when instead of falling on my knees 
before her and wildly kissing her hands and 
feet as I wished to do, or begging her to have 
mercy on me, I called old Smiles, who had 
come in, and told him to take his dory and go 
out to the Petrel and tell the crew to bring my 
gifts ashore, she even smiled in the old way. 
It was not because I had so remembered 
her, I knew, but because I had spared her. 

When Smiles returned leading the laden 
men, and I broke open all the bales and 
boxes, and spread their contents out before 
her, like some old peddler of the middle ages, 
piling them in chairs, and one fair thing 
253 


April 

after another in her lap, each always to be 
displaced by something fairer, she would not 
have been a woman had she not been inter- 
ested. And when, last of all, I drew a great 
rope of jewels out of a packet that I myself 
had brought ashore, and took it to her, throw- 
ing it over her head as she rose to meet 
me, and then wound it round and round 
her, after the fashion of the silken rope, bring- 
ing her face nearer and nearer mine, she 
reached up and kissed me once, and with the 
one kiss paid for all, and made me almost 
happy again. 

I say almost happy, for no one is really 
ever happy who has once seen what I had 
seen in April’s eyes ; and the jar of anything 
like that closed door behind the unknown 
man’s feet throws all the strings of life out of 
pitch, and so far out that no master, whether 
event or man, can put them into tune again. 
It is not a thing of wood and steel that has 
been touched and disturbed, but something so 
fine in us that an evil breath can sever it, 
though so strong, if never doubted, that one 
254 


April 

can draw up souls out of hell with it. But I 
had doubted ; and that night began the most 
terrible winter of my life. 

I do not mean that the winter was terrible 
because I had doubted April. I was not such 
a puling idiot as that. I would have taken 
her back, if I had known she came out of hell, 
and been happier than any other man ; for 
there was room for this below the perfection 
of those days with her upon the Petrel ; 
but she did not come back. 

Another woman might have returned to 
me after all that had happened, and in some 
poor way been content. April had received 
too much from her mother, who had found 
her among the lilies or on a violet bank, and 
too much from her violin-playing father, to 
endure the unnatural relation into which she 
saw she had been betrayed by love and the 
storm. Such false position would have been 
both more endurable to many women, and 
harder to escape. April struggled ceaselessly 
for what she had lost. All that winter she 
and I, realizing and unrealizing, asked each 
255 


April 

other which should finally be lost, when it 
came to that. I think there were moments 
when both of us realized everything, and I 
suspect we looked at each other in awful pity 
during them ; but, almost always, we fought 
and prayed — we had the agony of both — 
in the dark in which such strife of hearts or 
lives goes on, both of us groping blindly for we 
knew not what, defeating ourselves more 
often than we gained advantage. 

There were days when, exhausted, she would 
sink into my arms as she had in the storm ; 
and I would kiss her, as I did then, over and 
over again, not knowing, as I looked into her 
wet, pitiful, and shamed face, whether I 
rejoiced or pitied most. I put my gifts upon 
her in those days, and led her to the glass to 
see herself in them, and smiled to see her 
smile at them and touch them into greater 
daintiness upon herself. When she, having 
made herself fair, would look up to me for 
approval, I felt great tears, too large to shed 
upon the earth, fall back into my heart, as the 
rain falls back into the sea from which it rose. 
256 


April 

There were other days when she was strong, 
and put me so far away that I seemed entirely 
forgotten. If I read Theocritus aloud, she did 
not hear. At such times she put all I had 
brought far from her as myself, standing before 
the mantel straight and fair ; still, in her mov- 
ing hair, and the folds of her dress, and the 
many circles of the silken rope, like a star within 
a cloud. From my far off place, her eyes then 
seemed once more fallen into motionless mys- 
tery, and I would listen with strained ears for 
the other lover’s footsteps at the door. 

You will wonder that I did not give up, 
not because of that other at the door, but to 
spare April. I could not. A man must win 
or lose a woman. Love has no truces and 
no retreats. It is always either “ victory or 
death” in its appeal to arms, though not 
always, as in this case, bound to be both, what- 
ever the event. I did not always stay in the 
house, but I do not think my absence was 
much, if any, relief to either of us ; I know 
it was none to me. 

My crew had made the Petrel snug before 
x 7 257 


April 

I discharged them, and I used to go out to 
her, and stay whole days, and even nights, 
alone. I tried to read Theocritus, as I say, 
but this was not the mood for him. There 
are things too deep for any book, things no 
man can write, things to feel and suffer, as a 
mother suffers the wrench and break of 
travail, and, like it, not to be told, because 
speech would be sacrilege, and because it 
would be impossible to tell. 

Sometimes I hunted up my scattered crew 
to ask them, with some show of interest, if 
they would serve me another year, only to 
listen to their answers with such inattention 
that I never knew whether they had consented 
or refused. Often I found them together, and 
knowing how their thoughts would run, sat 
down to hear. Doubtless they told as great 
tales upon shore as on the Petrel ; but I 
cannot say ; for, soon as they began, my 
heart was off upon its own matters. 

Even the old justice was no help. I do 
not mean that I ever said anything to him of 
what was going on. I have said this would 
258 


April 

have been sacrilege. But his stories, which 
had always been so fascinating, were now 
dull as those the others told, which had been 
too dull to hear at all. 

They and he were some million miles 
away, crawling in some fantastic way, I used 
to think, when I thought of them at all, upon 
the slippery slant of some ice-covered moun- 
tain of the moon, and sprawling so grotesquely 
that I despised them for their crazy antics, 
wondering impatiently, as I turned away 
from them, why they could not keep upon 
hard earth. Oh, if I had only known they 
wandered so because the earth is hard, and 
because they had felt the iron of it, — as I of 
them all ought to have understood ! If I 
could have gone with them upon their fan- 
tastic pilgrimage, forgetting April for a crazy 
notion, or some huge lie, or some pleasant 
fancy which dances in one or another of the 
craters of those mountains of the moon up 
which I thought them climbing, how very 
happy I should have been, or how crazy, 
which is the same thing, for I know none so 
259 


April 

happy as the mad ! Bat I was not to join 
them, then. 

When the ice broke up in the harbor, I 
rehired the crew, and set them and Smiles 
at work scraping down the Petrel 9 s mast, 
painting, and putting everything to rights. 
April’s month had come, and I was sure it 
had brought some decision. 

I remember now that April noticed me 
even less than usual after the coming of her 
month. But I had always associated her 
with it in some mysterious way, and was 
not surprised at her absorption. Perhaps I 
even thought she was going to recover from 
it what she had lost. The mystery certainly 
came back, or now stayed longer in her eyes ; 
for I saw that my coming did not always dis- 
turb her, though it was, indeed, because she 
did not notice me. But I only saw that it 
was so, not guessing the reason, or, in my 
folly, hoped. 

Sometimes I think it was more than in- 
stinct, — that she had plain word of what 
was coming. I never found a scrap of paper, 
260 


April 

but one day Smiles came in, his twisted face 
more wry than usual and whiter than the letter 
he might have brought, and inquired for April. 
He whispered what he had to say to her, 
beyond the door. She came into the room, 
afterward, without seeing me, and my heart 
leaped at her look ; for it was the look she 
had when she first came to me; but when I 
sprang up, she fell back as white as Smiles 
had been ; and when I saw her eyes again, 
they were colder than ever. 

But Smiles may not have brought any 
word. I do not know. When I asked him, 
he stared significantly at me and said the ice 
had all gone out between the island and the 
main. I could see no importance in the 
information, however ; and what happened 
was a terrible surprise to me. 

One night, the very last night of the 
month, I think, a Canadian lumberman came 
into the harbor through the twilight. There 
was nothing singular about this, as the lumber- 
men often stopped at the island for one reason 
or another, and there was nothing peculiar 
261 


April 

about this particular vessel. She was straight- 
waisted and snub-nosed, like all her kind, 
and I thought nothing of her, after hailing 
her as she dropped alongside the Petrel 
upon which I had been detained. I was so 
little interested that I had not asked her desti- 
nation. When I finished what I had to do, 
we went in, the men pulling easily, while 
I lightly speculated why the stranger sent 
no boat ashore, and, more, upon what 1 
was going to ask April to do the next day, 
— nothing less than to go out to the Petrel 
with me, possibly for a short cruise outside 
the harbor. I vaguely thought that, once 
upon the Petrel , she would be her old self 
again, and forget the storm in recollection of 
what had preceded it. 

April was, herself, at the door when I 
entered, looking past me, I thought uneasily, 
as if for some one she expected might follow 
me up the walk. I looked back, but there 
was no one in the road, and no boat, I 
noticed without any particular reason, between 
us and the ungainly Canadian floating like a 
262 


April 

ghost among the shadows of the harbor. 
Some one was coming, none the less. We 
sat up late that night, sitting opposite each 
other before the fire which was still neces- 
sary. April had been even quieter than 
usual, looking, most of the time, into the 
fire, the light of which lit her face and hair, 
in the otherwise lightless room, with a soft 
splendor. I was also silent, for I was think- 
ing how to ask her to go with me on the 
May Day cruise. 

The conceit of May Day struck me ; and 
I was going to call myself the May, and say 
her month always came to mine, and that 
she should so come to me, and had leaned 
forward to speak, the recollection of the past 
already trembling in my voice, when I heard 
some one — that other one, I knew at once 
— come up the road and gravelled walk. 
April also knew, for she looked up, with 
a little cry, ignoring me entirely. He did 
not come to the door, but to the window. 
We both saw his face through it, — the face, 
I saw, of that wretched man whom I had 
263 


April 

left to starve upon the wharf at Saint John’s. 
What face April saw, I cannot tell. Who 
can tell how the face of another man looks 
to the woman whom he loves, and that man’s 
face, of all others, which she had rather see 
than his ? 

He did not stay at the window more than 
a minute, disappointed to see me, probably, 
and he went away without knocking or saying 
a word to April. 

I listened until the last lisp of his feet had 
passed, — yea, until the air, which he shook 
into wind, was once more motionless. Then 
I fell down before her, and plead as a man 
pleads for his life, yea, as he will plead for 
his eternal salvation before God. I forgot 
all my May Day conceits, and the Petrel , 
all except herself, and plead my naked soul 
for hers. All a man can plead I plead ; and 
she heard me for that, bending towards me as 
I looked up to her. The last thing in me 
rose to my eyes, and the utmost in her to 
hers, — or the utmost above that which she 
had lost for me, which I should never bring 
264 




April 

into her eyes again. All above that was 
uncovered, however, and she gave up to me, 

I thought. I think so still, and fell asleep 
that night thinking so ; for both her hands 
were in mine. 

But when I woke in the morning she was 
gone ; and when I went to the window, 
the lumberman was gone. 

XI 

I WAS sick with shame : not ashamed of 
my love for April, or of a single mo- 
ment of our fair days together ; nor was I 
ashamed of having been outwitted, — better 
be outwitted than to have suspected her. It 
was not the shame of defeat, but the shame 
of loss, — what a woman, driven naked 
through a street, would feel. I had been 
stripped ; the fair life, in which I had hidden 
from the world, was gone ; and I stared out 
of the window and wandered about the room 
like one of Theocritus’s shepherds whose 
had been stolen from his side in the 
265 


mate 


April 

night. I hid in what had been April’s room, 
as he might have fled across the pasture lands 
from the laughter of other shepherds. 

Smiles came to the door sometime in the 
forenoon, but I sent him away, terrified lest 
he should open it and discover me. He 
may have known all, I somehow felt that he 
did ; he may even have assisted April’s 
escape. I never asked him that, and do not 
know to this day. What I felt was that he 
was aware of my poor plight, that all the 
world was aware of it. It was not noon 
when he came, but I imagined all the fisher- 
men were talking of me and looking at the 
house, laughing beneath their breath, or, 
what was worse, pitied my poor appearance. 
I even thought they could see me through 
the windows, and cowered in the shadows, 
pulling my coat about me as if to hide my 
heart from them. 

The old crone brought food, and set it 
down outside the door. Sometimes I left it 
untouched ; sometimes, after listening to her 
descending clatter on the stairs and sure that 
266 


April 

she was gone, I took it in and ate, choking 
upon the mouthfuls no wine or water in the 
world could moisten. 

I might have followed the lumberman. 
The Petrel could have overhauled the straight- 
waisted, snub-nosed craft in a few hours or 
days, no matter what her course. But I saw 
the uselessness of such pursuit. No hands 
could have loosed April’s from mine, except 
her own. She had not been stolen like the 
shepherd’s mate. She had gone from me of 
her own will, exactly as she came. What 
could I say when I overhauled the lumber- 
man ? That it carried anything of mine ? 
This would not be true. The whole horror 
of the thing was in the untruth of such a 
charge. My pursuit would only hurt April 
and advertise my shame. So I stayed in her 
room, and was relieved when Smiles came to 
the door in a few days, and said he and his 
wife were going to his cabin on the other 
side of Mont Joie . 

The whole house was mine when they 
were gone. I had all of it to hide in, or to 
267 


April 

wander through, in my dazed, speechless 
way. There was nothing to say, nothing but 
my great loss, growing vaster every hour, to 
stare at and try to measure, as a bewildered, 
moon-struck dreamer tries to solve the 
infinite. 

All that relieved me was what April had left 
of the things which she had inherited from the 
governor’ s daughter. She had left all I gave ; 
for I looked, hoping something of mine was 
still in her hands ; but all was in the house. 
The fair gowns over which she had bent, and 
in which she had stood, all hung where she 
or Smiles’s old wife had put them. The other 
things were in drawers and boxes, and on 
shelves, — everything ! A few of her own 
things were gone ; it hurt me to see how few, 
for I remembered her love of them, and how 
she grew fairer day by day, as she changed in 
them ; and it also comforted me, for no one 
else could see her in what she had left, and 
something of herself still clung to them, as 
something precious clings to the cast-off gar- 
ments of the dead. 


268 


April 

What I wondered over most was the fillet 
which had always bound her cloud of hair. 

I found it on the bed ; it was the first thing I 
had touched when I woke and found her 
gone. Whether she left it purposely, or lost 
it there in her haste, I shall never know ; but I 
tried to think it was her desire, her last pity of 
me before she went, that she had looked down 
upon me as I slept, and remembered some- 
thing of the past, and had offered it to that, 
or me, like an oblation. And yet this hurt 
worse than all, for she had gone, and I was 
tortured with awful wonder of the greatness of 
whatever took her from me. It seemed to me 
that I could see her through the fillet’s circle, 
exactly as she must have looked when going 
from me, her hair falling closer and closer to 
her eyes, until their mystery — the mystery 
which was now deeper than ever in them — 
was hidden in greater mystery behind its cloud. 

This imagination grew upon me, as I held 
the fillet day after day — for I never put it 
down, when it was not in my hands keeping it 
upon my heart where I could see it as plainly 
269 


April 

as if in my hands — until I fancied that April, 
instead of going upon the ungainly Canadian 
lumberman as I had thought, was in some 
one or other of the clouds which floated across 
the sky. I fell into a way of staring at them, 
through the windows, first, then out-of-doors ; 
for this fancy was what first took me out-of- 
doors, all that made out-of-doors endurable. 
The conceit was a medicine for shame ; it 
hid me from myself, if not hiding April. I 
wandered up and down the brown roads, 
watching the white wanderers overhead, rowed 
out to the Petrel , and watched them from her 
deck, — fair, white clouds which might reveal 
April any time, I thought, expecting, in sweet 
suspense, that sometime one of them would 
fall apart in their strange w T ay, and that I 
should see her, or that she would fall upon 
me in its rain. 

The islanders were no more endurable to 
me in this mood, however, than in the other. 
I discharged the crew, giving them their 
summer’s pay, at which they stared and pro- 
tested ; but I assured them that it was right, 
270 


April 

and hurried them away, only relieved when 
they were gone. 

Even the old justice was intolerable, though 
he never betrayed the slightest curiosity, or 
seemed to think there was anything peculiar 
in my actions. He never spoke of April, 
either. How much he guessed, I do not 
know ; probably he knew everything, and did 
not need to guess at all. He talked more of 
the islanders, the living islanders, I mean, 
than I had ever heard him, — of their quarrels, 
and finally, with continual iteration, of strange 
thefts of which they were complaining. I 
cursed him, beneath my breath, for boring 
me, and was so uneasy while he talked that he 
must have noticed ; though he never seemed 
aware. He stayed for hours, always dwell- 
ing upon fresh details of the thefts with 
curious fascination. I told him, finally, that 
I was not interested, which hurt him so much 
that I did not add, as I intended, that I was 
also uninterested in him. I let him stay, and 
without much disturbance, afterward. If he 
could not choose his theme, he seemed minded 
271 


April 

not to talk at all, smoking in silence ; for he 
came as much as ever. 

So the spring passed, and summer came. 
Sometimes I spent the nights upon the Petrel , 
sometimes in April’s room. Often I did 
not lie down, sitting the night through in a 
drowsy dream, or rocked to sleep in my 
chair upon the PetreL 

One night when I was so dreaming in the 
shadows of April’s chamber, some noise or 
other roused me, and, opening my eyes, I 
saw that some one was in the room. I thought 
it was April, and was about to speak, the 
words rising in me in mad eagerness ; though 
I was too much surprised to move in the 
chair and deeper shadows where I sat. But 
as my lips parted, a curtain blew backward 
into the room upon the wind, and I saw 
it was not April who had come, but the 
man whom I had abandoned at Saint John’s, 
and who had looked upon us through the 
window, and with whom April had gone. 

All my paralysis of shame, and all the 
cloudy dream which had succeeded it, fell at 


April * 

once to limbo ; and I was instantly collected 
and alert, and it seemed to me strong enough 
to crush him in my two hands, easily as I 
could pulverize a lump of salt. I could have 
shot him there, for my pistol was in my 
pocket and loaded ; but a cunninger plan, a 
wise, a diabolically shrewd plan, dropped 
upon me perfectly developed as if I had been 
wofking upon it for years. I say dropped upon 
me, but I think it rose from the nether dark- 
ness, it was so cruel. At any rate I sat still, 
cooler than I am now, and watched him 
search the room, praying only that he might 
not discover me, whom he must have thought 
upon the Petrel , and so spoil the plan. 

He had evidently come for something of 
April’s. I do not know what it was, but 
guessed it was the fillet, and laughed at him, 
knowing he would never find it where it lay 
upon my heart hurting and comforting me as 
it had always done, laughed wildly, uproari- 
ously, deliriously ; though I did not make a 
sound or even quiver in my chair. 

He turned many things upside down, grop- 
18 273 


April 

ing unfamiliarly about, tearing and breaking so 
much that I cursed his ungentle hands and 
his feet, which walked upon what April had 
worn, wondering hotly if he so treated her ; 
but it was probably his haste and fear of 
being discovered. 

It must have been such fear that finally 
made him give up his search; though he had 
not been in the room a quarter hour, and had 
not yet searched the shadows where I sat. 
He did not strike a light, fearing it would be 
seen outside, I suppose, but groped like a blind 
man in the dark, and I thought then, and 
still think, undirected, or that the search was 
entirely his own, April having no part in it ; 
though she must have known he had come, as 
you will see. But whatever he wanted and 
however much he wanted it, he finally gave 
it up, and crept out of the room and down the 
stairs, halting upon every step, though why I 
could not understand ; for he must have 
thought me upon the Petrel , as I have said. 
I suppose he was afraid, as I have also said, 
and he had need to be ; for I was creeping 
274 


April 

after him, my pistol in my hand, moving even 
more silently than himsell, but only silent 
until he, or I, reached the outer door. 

He was going through the gate when I 
reached the door. I saw him look up and 
down the road to see if any one were coming, 
hesitating, I thought, as if afraid there might 
be some one in the way. If he hesitated, it was 
only for a moment ; for I shrieked with all my 
might, as he stood there, warning the sleeping 
islanders that the thief and murderer was found. 

He looked wildly back at me a moment, 
even as he ran. I can see his scared face now 
as the moon struck full upon it ; for there was 
a great moon in the sky that night, — a moon 
I blessed and praised as I ran after him, below 
it. I mocked him, laughing wildly as I had 
in April’s room, but now into the air, instead 
of into my own heart. I called him a snail 
and a turtle, and asked him why he limped ; 
though he was running fast as myself and as 
straight. I could have shot him any time, did 
raise my pistol once, but dropped it again, 
reminded of my cunning plan. 

275 


April 

All the islanders must have heard my first 
shout, and all understood at once ; for they 
were soon out of doors, and running after us, 
crying, I laughed to hear, as cruelly as I. 

The wretch had some start, as I have said, 
and lost none of it, running straight down the 
lit road to the beach, — the beach upon 
which he had once killed a man, — seeking I 
guessed, and rightly, some boat which he had 
left there. And, so quick was he, it seemed 
to me that he did not stop to push the dory 
off, the impact of his leaping body sending it 
flying into the water with him in it, already 
at the oars. 

I had to wait for the islanders to come up, 
— that was the plan. I would not grasp all 
the expiation of his death ; they should have 
part, and the murderer and thief, as well as my 
enemy, be punished. 

We filled a half-dozen dories, an oar in 
every rowlock, I noticed, remembering the 
other man-hunt, and still supernaturally wise. 
Most of the islanders were only half dressed, 
but they looked all the savager in their naked- 
276 


April 

ness. I saw all of my crew, old Hook com- 
manding one of the dories as coolly as if it 
were the Petrel . The others were in the 

boat with me, and so ahead ; for I had 

shoved off a dory, and was waiting for it to be 
filled when they came up. 

Quick as we were, we had given our quarry 
a good start. He was too far away for my 
pistol when my men’s oars struck the water, 
though I stood in the prow ; but I did not 
want to shoot him. I wanted to join with 
the others, and tear him limb from limb, as 
dogs tear a wolf. That they would do this, 

came they near enough to him, 1 had no 

doubt as we began the chase, their cries rising 
on the calm night air in a kind of wild 
rhythm like the baying of a pack. 

What the poor wretch thought, I do not 
know, but he had a better start than that 
other time ; for he was in a boat, and made 
as brave a use of it as he had of his former 
advantage, never stopping to listen to us, 
spurred on, instead. 

I was not troubled by his advantage. There 
277 


April 

would be no Petrel , this time, to put between 
himself and his pursuers, and no master of the 
Petrel to pity him. He might row, and row 
on whatever course he wished, but we would 
overtake him at last. There was but one 
port for him ; and all the winds, and all the 
tides, and all that was in the sea or us, would 
blow him into it. 

He did row, and straight away, pulling for 
Mont Joie as he had once swum for it, and so 
mightily that he reached the hill before we 
did, and was fleeing up its rocky sides when 
our dories struck and we tumbled out of them. 

I could see him under the great moon as 
plain as day, leaping and scrambling from rock 
to rock, like some goat or wild animal. I saw 
more than him ; the tremendous event seemed 
to widen my vision, as well as clear it. Every 
rounded scrub oak and slim birch stood out 
upon the mountain. I saw all the great steps 
up which he was climbing with such terrific 
haste, saw the dark grass flung over them 
like rugs, and even the great mountain lilies 
waving softly back and forth upon their slender 
278 


April 

stems. But far as I saw and much, I did not 
see all upon the mountain. 

There was something hidden, in some 
shadow, which would have delivered him as 
completely as the Petrel had the other time, 
if he had gained it ; and it was for this he 
struggled, not in afterthought or accidentally, 
as he had for the Petrel, but from my first 
awful cry. 

We did not know his desire as we climbed 
after him, only cursed him because he took us 
so far and so difficult a way ; and it was this, 
not any inkling of the retreat he sought, that 
made me fire just as he reached the topmost 
step, when his body stood out sharper than 
ever against the sky. I thought he would 
cross the hills and so prolong the terrific chase. 
I did not dream he intended to wait for us 
upon the top, as he must have planned, con- 
fident in the refuge there. I fired to bring 
him down : “for the dogs to worry,” I laughed 
between gasping breaths. One shot would 
have been enough ; but I was wild as any, 
now, and poured every cylinder into him. 

279 


April 

He hung upon the edge a moment, it 
seemed a lifetime, and then, almost leaping, 
fell among us. But no one touched him, or 
even noticed, him, as he lay there bruised and 
huddled at our feet ; for we heard a great cry 
above us, long and bitter as a sob ; and some 
one, I knew whom without seeing, fell with 
him, though not to us, shot by one of my 
wild bullets. 

No one else would go up, so I went alone. 
I knew whom I would find, but climbed to her, 
with curious exaltation. It may have been 
the wide vision which was stronger than ever 
upon me, but I seemed above emotion, even 
when I found April. 

She had caught a great bunch of the red 
mountain lilies by the roots when she fell, and 
was still holding them. The great blossoms 
bent over her as if they, also, saw. Each 
blossom separated itself from every other in 
my vision. Each short blade of mountain 
grass stood by itself around the prostrate one. 
Never, even on the way up, had I realized 
what sight meant, until I passed the still grass 
280 


April 

and lilies, or bent with them to April’s sweet, 
white face. 

Perhaps I did cry out, perhaps I am deceived 
and some sob escaped my lips ; but, if so, I 
heard nothing of either, looked upon her as 
men will look upon each other before God. 


XII 

T HE islanders buried the wretched lover 
where he fell. I could hear them 
laboring as I went by with April in my arms. 
The earth was shallow, but they dug through 
it to the rock, and laid him on it, and then 
heaped the thin sod upon him, piling him a 
monument of stones, — a monument, and an 
extra covering from the searching winds and 
curious wild beasts. 

No one had come near April and me. 
They left me to do what belonged to me, as 
the world so rarely does ; and I did it, as best 
I knew, cutting the lilies up below her hands, 
that she might carry them with her — a pro- 
281 


pitiation, or an oblation — into that world 
which would be strange to her, I thought, 
though she had so much of its mystery. 

When I had brought her down Mont Joie 

— curious names the fathers gave the lands ! 

— carrying her as lightly, in my mood, as if she 
were another lily cut up also by the roots, I 
put her in one of the dories upon the clothes 
which I tore from my body to make her a bed. 
Then, without waiting — there was no other to 
wait for — I rowed her to the Petrel . Here, 
also, I was alone ; for no one came near us 
that night while I made her ready for the grave. 

I could not wait, for I did not know how 
long the mighty mood would last. If I waited, 
some one would come to help me do what I 
was minded to do alone. Some one might 
even come and interfere with me ; or stop me 
on the way which opened before my eyes ; or 
might even take April from me, as she had 
been taken once before. 

So I washed all the stain from her, weeping 

— I did weep then, though softly and such 
great tears that they seemed to strain my eyes 

282 


April 

as they pushed through — weeping as I touched 
the fair, white body I had kissed, and kissed 
then with such love that I could not understand 
why she did not answer me. I almost thought 
she would come to life ; but my wild shot had 
been true as the intended, stopping her heart 
which I had once heard beat its great watch 
of love. She did not stir beneath my kisses 
or my hands. 

When all the red stain was washed away, I 
took the fillet from the place where I had kept 
it for her, against this day perhaps, and bound 
her cloud of hair in it again ; and, having 
ordered the silken rope and smoothed her 
dress, I prayed for her. 

I did not say a word, there were no words 
great enough, or I was not great enough to 
say the proper words, so I prayed over her 
without words. I do mot know whether God 
heard my prayer ; but He gave the mood 
which made it possible to pray. If I could 
wash the red stain from her body. He surely 
could do as much to purify her of any stain 
upon her soul. 


283 


April 

Then I stripped myself of all that I had not 
already taken off to make the bed for her, and, 
taking her in my arms, she still carrying the 
lilies, climbed over the Petrel' s rail and sunk 
straight down beneath the yacht to the place 
where I was going to make her a grave. 

I wonder at it now ; but I did not wonder 
then. She was at last my own, I thought 
entirely my own ; and I fancied I was hiding 
her from all others. 

I put her down on the soft earth when we 
reached it, and began to dig her grave, scoop- 
ing up the earth with my bare hands. I could 
not stay long enough to finish it, so, lifting 
her again, for I would not be separated from 
her a moment even in that place among the 
dead, I rose to the surface, and drank deep 
of the sweet winds. Then I kissed her, and 
went back. With such brief intervals of 
rest, I soon dug deep enough to hide her, as 
I thought, from all men and from the sea. 
Kissing her once more, I covered her face 
with the cloud of hair, binding the fillet tight 
about her brow, and buried her, scarcely 
284 


April 

escaping death myself this time ; for I would 
not leave her until all was done. 

She lies there now, below the golden 
cloud, holding up the red lilies in her hands. 

I dressed myself when I recovered, and 
watched above her, on the Petrel's deck, 
the remainder of the night, without impatience, 
and without questionings, as I did afterward 
for many days ; for I only went ashore when 
necessary. 

Smiles came out the next day, and talked 
to me in his strange speech, nervously clutch- 
ing the Petrel' s rail, as he told how April 
and her lover had hidden in his lonely cabin 
beyond Mont Joie ; for they had not gone in 
the lumberman, as I had thought. The 
wretched lover stole enough from the islanders 
to keep them alive. I did not blame Smiles, 
and I did not forgive him, scarcely knew the 
difference when he was gone, so intent was 
I upon my watch, or so content with my 
great possession ; but he may have interrupted 
me more than I was aware. 

How the mood passed, I do not know, 
285 


April 

nor why I fell back upon myself ; for that 
great mood seemed other than myself. 

I had been conscious of no other, as I say ; 
but one night, while I watched, I seemed 
to overhear a whisper between the mountain 
and the sea. I suppose it was no more than 
the perpetual intercourse between the winds 
and waves ; but it seemed to me that some 
one, I thought that one buried under the thin 
sod beneath the monument of stones, was 
talking to my dead, and I believed that he 
had been talking to her all the while that I had 
been lost in the mood, and that he, being 
dead, was nearer her than I, and laughed at 
me for hiding her from all the world save 
him from whom I would most wish to hide 
her. 

I saw how far I was from April, and 
would have died then to go to her, had he 
not whispered, from his place, with quiet 
scorn, that she had been his before she was 
mine, and after she was mine. 

What man cannot understand my hurt ! 
I had more than lost April again. If I be- 
286 


April 

lieved the dead man, under the stones, she 
had not been mine at all, or ever. I did be- 
lieve him. The cloud-covered face and the 
lilies that I had fancied were growing in the 
sea disappeared beneath the doubt the mocker 
raised. I was suddenly as one who had 
never seen her. All I had seen and suffered 
in the great mood was a dream, a dream from 
which I woke to gray day. But I could not 
altogether forget — we do not forget our 
dreams though we wake, from them and know, 
or think we know, they were dreams — and 
my memory answered the mocker beneath the 
stones. If he were not deaf, he must have 
been hurt as much as I. 

I remembered those two alarms, of opening 
and closing door, which had not been made 
by him any more than by myself. I saw the 
ashes in the little tray upon the mantel, and 
the gray smoke in the corners of the ceiling, 
and thought I knew, as I looked upon them 
then, that love, burned, would make less 
ashes, and that April had loved no one, and 
that life was indeed old and gray, not mine, 
287 


April 

alone, but all men’s ; for I thought all women 
without love. 

You will think what I did, then, a mad 
thing, but it was not. I did not flee to the 
world, but, one midnight, I climbed to the 
place where the islanders had bound my rival 
beneath the stones, and lifted all from him, 
and him from the hard earth, and brought him 
down with' my own hands, and, after making 
him as decent as I could, sent him to April. 
I did this so he could see how far she was from 
him, and suffer more. 

His coming to April was different, how- 
ever, from what I had wickedly imagined 
it would be. I had expected the sea would 
be filled with his groanings. I now under- 
stood that he might have laughed at me. In- 
deed,' I had scarcely let him go before I saw 
that I could have been deceived into doing 
what I had done. A fancy that he had played 
upon my evil imaginations, and so persuaded 
me to carry him to her, flashed upon me as I 
watched his white face fall through the waters. 
But it was not laughter that I heard in the 
288 


April 

sea. I heard great weeping, not of sorrow 
but of joy, and understood that I had unwit- 
tingly been compassionate. 

Something more wonderful has happened, — 
that which made me tell this story, which is 
told for love of April, so that you who may 
hear of her and how I loved her shall say no 
evil of us. I have said that I thought the 
lilies were growing in the sea. It blossoms 
with them now, and is fairer than a garden. 
Whether it was the tears that fell upon them 
from that other lover’s eyes, which made the 
red lilies flower so wonderfully, or it was 
because I was compassionate and they bloom 
for me, I do not know. Far off among them, 
April, as if conscious of them, has pushed the 
cloud of hair from her eyes ; but I am certain 
that she is not altogether absorbed in the 
lilies or even in the adoration of that other 
lover at her feet. She loves him, I am sure. 
(How curious that this does not hurt, any 
more !) But I am as sure that she loves me. 

I am come to the mystery, — so great, 
and terrible, and sweet, that I have not been 
19 289 


April 

able to see it until now. She has not been 
fickle or hard-hearted ; she loved us both. 
I could not understand, and took him from 
her to Saint John’s. He did not understand, 
and stole her from me. I killed him; and he 
tortured me from his place beneath the stones. 
Worse than all, I was blind to her humiliation. 
For this and my passion, I was bound to suffer 
loss of all until she regained her supremacy in 
his better love, — so strange a thing that I, who 
dragged her down, was most terrified by it. 

Perhaps no one could have understood 
better than I did ; but any one could see 
here, above the lilies ; and you, I am sure, 
would go, as I am going now, through the 
heavy, heavy blossoms to the woman who 
has risen in her far off place among them, and 
looks at me, over that other lover’s adoring face. 
Her own eyes are once more wonderful, and 
the great stone in her fillet blazes like a star. 
I shall not lose my way, I know, though I do 
fare into the world to come. 


290 


THIS BOOK IS PRINTED BY THE UNIVER- 
SITY PRESS CAMBRIDGE MASSACHUSETTS 
DURING JANUARY 1900 












































































































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